Journey's Beginning
by Cosmo4ever
Summary: TenToo and Rose struggle to sort through their feelings for each other after they're left together in the alternate universe. Meanwhile, Aziraphale realizes that he's deeply in love with Crowley after the apocalypse-that-wasn't, but he's not brave enough to let Crowley know. When the two odd couples run into each other, will they help each other out or just make matters worse?
1. Chapter 1

Note: In terms of timelines, this starts right as TenToo and Rose are left on the beach in Doctor Who and soon after the apocalypse-that-wasn't in Good Omens. For my sanity's sake, this happens at the same time, even though Good Omens is set in 2018 and Journey's End was in like 2012ish in Pete's World. I didn't want Rose and TenToo to sit around for six years, so just assume that everything happens concurrently.

As the TARDIS whooshing noise faded into the background, Rose stared at the spot where it had been. In that little (on the outside) blue box, her best friend and love of her life had disappeared into an alternate universe. And she'd kissed another man right in front of him. The last image he'd ever have of her was her kissing another man. Her lips, still swollen from the passionate kiss just a few moments earlier, felt filthy and soiled. She dropped the other Doctor's hand, watching the waves crashing into the shore.

Bad Wolf Bay. Such an ironic name. Once, the Doctor had given his life up for her, when she had been the Bad Wolf. And he'd burned up a sun to say goodbye to her here. In return, she cheated on him with a lesser version of him, ensuring his last memory of her would be tainted.

"Rose!" the Doctor yelled, as if he'd said it a few times already. He stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the beach.

"Are you okay?" he ventured, nothing but concern in his eyes. He looked so much like him, she thought miserably. His lips were slightly swollen as well, an extremely appealing look that distracted her momentarily from her thoughts. What she wouldn't do to kiss him again.

But she couldn't. Because she hadn't kissed the Doctor. She'd kissed a copy of him, a version that had to be different from him in more ways than just aging. Because it was impossible that a perfect copy of him could be created for her.

There would never be a perfect copy. No matter what happened with this new Doctor, her Doctor was out there somewhere. He loved her too – she was sure of that, whether or not he'd said it out loud. He loved her and left her and was miserable now, devoid of all the companions that had given him life and helped him finally pilot the TARDIS correctly.

She saw the sadness in his eyes when he'd looked at Donna and knew that that wasn't going to work out. Something would happen to her – she was sure of it. Once Donna was gone, he'd have no one, and he'd go back to living a lonely life, tortured by the knowledge that his counterpart was living out his dream life with the girl he loved.

She made a decision. She couldn't let him do this to himself. The Dimension Cannon had worked this time, so it could work again. There had to be another tear out there somewhere, and she'd use whatever resources she could to find it.

While she felt bad for the human Doctor and certainly wouldn't abandon him, she couldn't have the life with him that the Doctor wanted her to have. She couldn't abandon him either, parallel universe or not.

"I'll be okay," she told this Doctor, not taking the hand he offered her. She strode over to Jackie, who had witnessed the entire exchange without saying anything. Her mother offered her a hug, and she gladly took it, trying not to cry as she processed all of her emotions from the last few minutes.

It might take a while, but she'd find her Doctor eventually.

The human Doctor watched her sadly. He could tell that she'd decided not to be with him for now, and he vowed to give her whatever she needed regardless. He loved her, more than he could ever express through words, and all he wanted was to see her happy.

He looked down at the piece of TARDIS gripped tightly in his hand, which was supposed to eventually grow into a TARDIS in fifty years or so. While it wouldn't bring her back to her Doctor, he thought it could be a good start.

Bright sunlight battered her eyes, interrupting the nice dream she had been having about a very relaxing beach vacation on the beaches of Sidornia in the Nargilian Galaxy. That had been a great weekend.

Groaning and willing away the rest of the world, especially whatever was making that god-awful banging noise above her head, Rose rolled over into her blankets until she was securely wrapped up in their protective warmth.

The banging noise continued, unceasing, making it very difficult for her to accomplish her goal of falling back asleep. She heard a child (Tony, most likely, as there weren't any other children in the household) scream-laughing as he jumped around above her. She sighed, refusing to get out of bed for a few more minutes, until her mouth started to taste gross and she really had to use the loo.

She unraveled herself from her blanket cocoon and stood up, stretching like a cat. After she completed her morning routine and pulled on a pink shirt and a pair of pants, she wandered through the house towards the kitchen.

She'd been back here for a few months now, and she still couldn't get used to how large this house was. It was at least 20, if not 30, times larger than her flat at the Powell Estate. Her bedroom was as large as that flat had been.

Sometimes she loved it here. Her bed was a lot softer, for one thing, and there was a lot of great food, but the house was also so large that it felt empty. And he wasn't helping matters.

She passed by his door. It was ajar, and she heard him snoring inside. She glanced at her watch, smirking slightly. One thing she'd definitely never get used to was a sleeping Doctor. Especially one who slept in until almost noon. Her mum would have some choice words for him when he woke up.

Considering that she could smell pancakes cooking downstairs, Rose felt justified entering his room to wake him up.

It was strange entering his bedroom. With the old Doctor – her Doctor – it wouldn't have been. They hung out in his bedroom on the TARDIS all the time, not that they ever slept there. They'd discuss planets they'd visited or planned to visit, debate random subjects like the dating habits of Absorbalovians, or just snuggle together and watch a movie on his ceiling TV screen.

They never took it any further than that, although she'd constantly yearned to. While they had flirted frequently and cuddled at least once a day, their physical interactions remained strictly platonic. Despite the frustration this had caused her at times, she still had many fond memories of spending time in his room.

The new Doctor's room was a mystery to her, however. She'd go in briefly, to pick up a toy Tony had thrown in or to help him get settled if he'd had a little too much to drink, but she never spent more than a minute or two in there. She felt like she shouldn't, like her Doctor would be hurt even more badly if he knew that she'd cuddled with a different Doctor.

Even worse, she couldn't lie to herself about the fact that she found her new Doctor just as attractive as the real one, and she'd had more than a few fantasies involving him since they arrived in the parallel universe. It felt like cheating, though, and she tried to pretend like they didn't happen.

The Doctor's room was a pigsty. Unlike the Time Lord's room, which had barely been lived in since the Doctor didn't frequently sleep, the part-human Doctor slept as much as she did and subsequently used the room daily.

Clothes were thrown all over the place, hanging off his bed, on a lamp, and in piles on the floor. For every shirt, there was at least one book and trinket. The books had his chicken scratch handwriting all over them, in sticky notes and dog-eared corners. The trinkets – phones, iPads, laptops, mechanical pencils, and defibrillators – were in various states of disassembly. Screwdrivers littered the floor like pine needles from a pine tree, each with a unique tip that only fit in one or two screws.

All the Doctor did now was read and tinker, tinker and read, then read and tinker again. He constantly looked exhausted, and he'd always deflect whenever Rose asked him why.

It was always "just a bit of light reading" (as if a 3000-page manuscript was light reading) or "just messing around" (which didn't explain how he nearly lit his bed on fire that one time). Rose was curious about what he was doing, but also tried to give him space. As she had to remind herself occasionally, he wasn't her Doctor, and it didn't matter what he did with his spare time.

She found him in his bed, still in his regular clothing. He was curled up in the blankets just like she had been earlier that morning. His unshaven face peeked out from between his comforter and pillow. Something was sticking out from under his arm – a book.

This one's title was hard to make out (due to the arm covering the vast majority of it), but she saw the words "A Brief History of the" and figured it was probably another history book. All of the books in the room seemed to be about various historical periods. She didn't even know how he'd acquired them all, unless he was using Pete's money.

There were also a number of more modern books about aliens and potential alien invasions. Seeing as this universe's Earth had never actually had an alien invasion, just the Cybermen created by Cybus Industries, these books were purely theoretical in nature. Or full of conspiracy theories.

She stared at his peaceful face, wishing she had his gift for telepathy. Since they had returned to this universe, they weren't as intimate – physically or emotionally – as she had been with his Time Lord counterpart. They had countless conversations, sure, but none of them were about the things that really mattered.

He mumbled something unintelligible in his sleep, breaking her out of her thoughts. Leaning down next to his face, she softly whispered, "Doctor, wake up," to him. He mumbled something again, and she smiled as she saw a bit of drool next to his mouth.

There was something undeniably cute about a human Doctor, as much as she'd tried to distance herself from him. And there was a very small list of people who'd she'd think were cute if she saw them drooling on themselves. (The list contained two people, one of whom was not in this universe and had most likely never drooled on himself to begin with.)

One of his eyes cracked open, analyzing the scene in front of him. He blinked sleepily a few times then focused on her.

"Rose?" his voice croaked.

She smiled at him.

"G'morning, Doctor. It's noon so I figured I'd wake ya up," she said softly. He grinned at her, looking as happy as he did before he ran towards her and got shot by a Dalek (which wasn't him, she reminded herself), and she thought about anything but how much she loved that smile. His eyes darkened as he remembered the chasm that had widened between them in the months following that day, and he broke eye contact.

Coughing slightly to hide the sudden awkwardness, Rose pointed towards the book.

"What were you reading?" she ventured curiously. He looked towards the book dismissively, seemingly uninterested in it.

"It's a history of the fifteenth century. Fascinating time, really. Did you know that they had real unicorns in this universe? Not back in the fifteenth century, obviously, but a few millennia before that. There are quite a few accounts of unicorns running around in Europe, Asia, and even the Americas. Not that our original universe doesn't have unicorns too, mind you. But ours have five horns and two legs so unicorn really isn't the best word to describe them now that I think about it. Now, what I'd really like is a book on the fourteenth century. Can't find any of them! It's like someone here really didn't like the fourteenth century –"

"Doctor," Rose said, trying not to laugh. He cocked his head at her, confused.

"Oh, babbling again," he said as he saw her expression.

"Yep," she replied, smirking. He chuckled too, jumping out of the bed and throwing the book in a pile with around fifty other historical texts. She raised an eyebrow but didn't ask. She didn't want to delve too deeply into this Doctor's personal life. It always felt wrong talking to him and laughing with him when she knew her Doctor was suffering in her universe (the alternative - that he'd found someone to replace her already – hurt too much to think about, although it was most definitely preferable to him being alone).

Her smirk turned into a sad smile. Her Doctor babbled too, once. If only she could find her way back to him. She was trying, but it wasn't easy.

"Well, Mum's making pancakes so I'm going to go have some," she said as she turned back to the door. "Feel free to join us," she added, trying not to let her internal anguish show on her face. She ducked out the door, unable to look at him for much longer.

He watched her, sighing as her face shuttered and she started to distance herself from him. He tried so hard to be the Doctor she remembered (which got easier over time, as Donna's mental influences were slowly overshadowed by the stronger Time Lord brain), but it was difficult when she acted so strange around him.

Whenever he did anything that was, for lack of a better word, too Doctory, she'd grimace and remember that he wasn't the Doctor she wanted. He loved her so much, even after months of her barely being able to interact with him, and just wanted to help her move on and be happy. But whenever she remembered the other Doctor, her eyes became so sad. It hurt him to see his Rose like that.

She made some quick comment and left him to his own devices. He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to force out all the sleepiness (it never worked, but it always seemed like it should). Pushing thoughts of Rose and their strained relationship away, he focused on getting dressed and preparing for the day.

Human morning rituals were still odd to him. Time Lords had many of the same features as humans but didn't need to do everything so frequently. If he avoided shaving for a few days, now, he'd end up with visible stubble that Jackie would make some inane comment about.

The worst part was his teeth. Time Lords had superior teeth (in addition to many other superiorities, as he used to like to lord over his human companions). He hadn't had to brush his teeth once, as his enamel naturally repelled plaque and food particles. But as a human, he had to go through the boring process twice a day.

Oftentimes, shaving and showering and brushing and clothing his new human form took so long that he wondered how humans ever had time to do anything else. Rose also did makeup, which added even more time to her routine. He avoided that particular hazard, at least.

Once he was dressed, he walked over to the pile of books near his bed, picking one up. He'd read through every book he could find searching for references to Time Lords, Gallifrey, and Doctors, to no avail. He was convinced that there had to be some version of him in this universe, or at least some version of Gallifrey, and that that would help Rose move on.

If he could find a Time Lord with a TARDIS, they could use it to grow the clump of TARDIS the other Doctor had given them more quickly, like jumpstarting a car. Then he could finally quell his wanderlust again and give Rose a chance to travel the universe.

Or if there was an alternate Doctor, a fully Time Lord one, Rose might choose to travel with them (as far as he knew, there was nothing preventing him from regenerating into a female or nonbinary Doctor, even though it hadn't yet occurred in his timeline). While it would hurt him, he wouldn't blame her for that choice. He wasn't her ideal travelling companion, and he wouldn't be his ideal travelling companion either. He had committed genocide right in front of her, and that sight would probably haunt her for the rest of her life.

And that wasn't even getting into his own feelings about being stuck here. He'd lost everything when the other Doctor had exiled him here. Rose no longer acted like she cared about him. He had lost his deep mental bond with his TARDIS. All of the friends, enemies, and acquaintances he'd made over his 900 years in his original universe were gone. And most of all, he knew that no one would actually know the difference, as there was still a Doctor in that universe travelling and regenerating and loving and losing. He was just a worthless copy of a better man.

He had been battling depression and anxiety for the last few months, and they kept him from ever getting a good night's rest. To combat the raging storm of thoughts in his head, he threw himself into tinkering with Earth technology and researching this universe's history to try to make some headway on finding another Doctor or at least developing a device to help speed up the growth of the TARDIS.

If, every once in a while, he'd end up improving the technology in a way that wasn't supposed to happen for at least a few centuries, who could blame him? Just because that was the future in his universe didn't mean it would happen in this universe's future. He had sold a few of the upgraded devices, like the flying bicycle, to get money to purchase more books.

Distracting himself worked sometimes. He'd be so focused on his tasks that barely sleeping and not travelling outside of Pete's house wouldn't bother him. But then he'd remember one of his adventures, or Rose would look at him sadly, and it would all come rushing back.

Sighing again, he put the book back down and left to go eat some pancakes.

When everyone in the Tyler household, even little Tony, was full-to-bursting with pancakes, Rose and the Doctor helped Jackie with the dishes. They made small talk (or, more accurately, made a few noises of acknowledgement while Jackie did all of the talking), then Rose said goodbye to both of them, kissed a sugar-crazed Tony on the head, and headed out the door.

Like the Doctor, she had a few secrets of her own. She knew how unhappy they both were here. She had never planned to stay in this universe, and the thought of her Doctor going through his life alone filled her with dread every day.

Despite her conflicting feelings about this Doctor, she wanted to help him. She tried not to care, but she saw how out of sorts he was here, and she thought that he'd be happier in the TARDIS too.

Neither of them wanted to wait until the small chunk of TARDIS finished growing. His time here had already been punishment enough for the both of them, and she knew he regretted what he'd done to the Daleks. If they could only return to the right universe, she'd be reunited with her Doctor and the part-human Doctor could live with them too. She knew that she'd feel much more secure being affectionate towards him if she could also be with the other Doctor.

She idly imagined what it would be like if she could enjoy some personal time with two Doctors, then shoved that thought aside and tried to ignore the flush of arousal it caused. She had business to worry about right now, after all.

Jake drove his van up to the end of the gigantic driveway, waving at her. She waved back, grinning at him. She walked around to the passenger door and got in, greeting the other members of Torchwood who were sitting in the back.

Like her, they agreed that they wanted to return to her universe. For Torchwood, it was a matter of security. They had had a glimpse of how many aliens the Doctor encountered in his universe, and they wanted information on how to stop them from that universe's Torchwood. Although she'd tried to explain that the aliens in her universe didn't necessarily exist in this one, they were insistent.

In the end, she didn't put up much of a fight, since her task would be easier with their assistance. For the last three months, they'd tried to jump between dimensions with the Dimension Cannon. Every time, the jump would fail, and Rose would end up vaguely disoriented and nauseous.

Without the barriers breaking down between worlds, she had a sneaking suspicion that she was never going to be able to get back to the Doctor's universe. She put on a brave face for the other members of her Torchwood team, though, as she was the de facto leader of their group, and they all looked up to her.

Whenever she felt that it wasn't going to work, she smothered that thought, instead thinking about how alone her Doctor was. Without anyone, she knew he could become self-destructive and cold. He needed someone to ground him. He needed her.

They tested the Dimension Cannon eighteen times that day, and it failed eighteen times. Throughout the long and exhausting ordeal, she did her best to avoid thinking about the doubts clouding her mind.

The sudden downpour as Rose stepped out of the Torchwood vehicle and walked quickly towards the door of her home did nothing to improve her mood. In addition to the Dimension Cannon's repeated failures, it had glitched on the last test, singeing her hair and jacket. She rather liked that jacket. It was her blue one that she bought when she started working for Torchwood. Her mum said it made her look older and more mature.

Now, it just looked like one of the jackets her previous Doctor would wear, which really wasn't her style.

Grumbling to herself about it, she stuck the wrong key into the lock repeatedly, finally realizing why it wasn't working on the third try. She unlocked the door and it slammed open. Nearly falling in in her haste to get out of the rain, she slid on the floor, gaining her balance before she crashed into the vase in the foyer.

She didn't think today could get much worse. Closing the front door behind her, she took off her shoes and newly blackened jacket, then dropped all her stuff next to the coat rack. She really needed a cuppa.

The kitchen was empty, even though it was nearly time for dinner, and she remembered that her mum and dad had their weekly date night tonight. Tony was with a friend for a sleepover, so the house was oddly quiet. That just left the Doctor.

Considering he'd been leaving the house no more than once a week lately, she guessed that he'd be in his room. When she knocked on the door and heard a wordless grunt in response, she knew she was right.

He opened the door. He was even more of a mess than usual, with a wrench in his teeth, terribly disheveled hair, and a wrinkled pair of pyjamas. He cocked his head, recognizing that he probably couldn't speak coherently with the wrench in his mouth, and gestured as if he was asking her why she was at his door.

"I was just makin' dinner," she answered. "Did you want some?"

He nodded, gestured again in a way that she assumed meant he'd be down in a minute, then stepped back and closed the door.

She sighed. She missed having a Doctor she could be close with.

Plagued by dark thoughts, which were amplified by the bad day she'd had, she mindlessly went about the task of cooking up a simple dinner. She didn't have the energy for anything too fancy, and her mum had forbidden her from cooking for the Doctor much anyway. She said he really should have learned to cook sometime in the last 900 years, and he was going to learn to this year whether he wanted to or not.

This Doctor wasn't nine centuries old though. He wasn't even a year old. That thought weirded her out when she thought about it too deeply, so she refocused on cooking. Once the chips were ready and the fish had been cooked through, she slid some onto both plates (more onto his plate than hers, since he was still extremely skinny) and walked into the living room.

He was lazing about on the couch watching a nature documentary. He grinned at her, pointing towards the screen.

"Did you know about some of the brilliant creatures that live deep under the sea?" he asked. "There's a gigantic jellyfish with giant arms. There's some stuff that isn't from our universe, too, like this gray fish with tentacles that shoots out lasers. Honestly, it kinda looks like a Dalek."

Curious, she sat down next to him and watched the show. The creature did, in fact, appear to be vaguely like a Dalek. Except for its giant eyes and pupils.

"It looks like a Dalek with Googly eyes," she said, snorting out the sip of the drink she had just taken. He laughed at her reaction, and they fell into fits of laughter.

After the terrible day she'd had, it felt so good to laugh and to be around someone who understood her. She let herself forget for a while that he wasn't her Doctor. They watched the rest of the documentary, comparing fish to various aliens they met throughout their time in the TARDIS.

She didn't realize how close she was sitting to him until he put his arm over her shoulder like he used to. She immediately tensed up, and he drew his arm away hastily, like she was a startled cat on the verge of attacking him. She felt bad when she saw the look in his eyes – a mixture of hope and infinite sadness.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, unable to look him in the eye. "I just can't. It's not you, not really. You're just…"

"Not him," he finished, huddling into himself as he stared off over her shoulder. "I know."

"No, you're not him. But it's not that. It's that he's out there, all alone, while you're here with me and I just feel so wrong being happy when he's not. Ya know?" She glanced at him. He still refused to look at her, but he looked like he was almost crying.

"Rose, stop saying that it's not me. Don't pull the 'it's not you, it's me' line. I was there the very first time someone used that line, and it was just as untrue then as it is now. Or I guess it wasn't me that was there. Because I'm not him. I'm just a, quite literally, halfhearted copy of him that he discarded into a parallel universe."

She shook her head, wiping away the tears that were starting to fall down her face.

"And it's both of our faults," he continued. "It's partially your fault because you're not even trying. You don't try to look past him and see me. All you ever see is him. You won't let yourself be happy with me because I'm just a sad version of him. You haven't tried to move past losing him at all, even though he chose to send us here. He wanted this for you. I want to be with you, and I've told you I love you, but –" His voice cracked as he choked back a sob. "But you'll only ever love him."

She wanted to deny it. She loved the Doctor, and he was the Doctor, but her other Doctor was still alone, and she couldn't bear to think of that. How could she love him when that meant cheating on the other Doctor?

"It's really not you," she started.

"Stop saying that!" he yelled, openly crying now. "It is. It is me! And you're never going to be able to move on and accept that he's gone, so I'm never going to be enough."

"Well, maybe you should move on yourself!" she yelled back, even though she knew yelling wasn't going to make anything better. "Maybe instead of sitting around in your bedroom all day playing with toys, you could actually start living your life as a human! If you were really the Doctor, you'd go do something! Instead of just moping around waiting for someone who doesn't want you."

"That goes both ways, Rose. He left you here because he didn't want you," the Doctor said, glaring at her. "If it had been me left alone and you'd been stuck here with him, would you have avoided being with him because of me?"

His dark tone cut through her, and she shivered. She opened her mouth to reply that of course she wouldn't have, but she couldn't get the words out.

She stood up, walking to the door without looking back at him.

"I'm going out for a walk," she said numbly. He didn't reply, so she closed the door behind her.

Without paying attention to where she was going, Rose strode through central London. The rain had stopped, which was great considering that she hadn't brought her jacket with her. All she had on her was her phone, keys, and wallet, which was hopefully enough.

If it wasn't, she still wasn't going back to the house. She didn't want to see the Doctor right now, and she had a feeling that he didn't want to see her either.

She didn't even know why she said everything she'd said during that fight. If she was being honest with herself, it wasn't true that she didn't want the half-human Doctor. She did want him, both physically and emotionally, but it was a matter of restraining herself from fulfilling those desires.

His last question stuck with her. How would she have reacted if it had been his Time Lord counterpart and not him who had been stuck with her? She had never thought about it that way before. It made her realize an uncomfortable truth – he was right.

If it had been him sent to another universe, she wouldn't have tried to find him. While she knew he looked like the Doctor and had all of his thoughts, memories, and feelings, it was difficult to view him as something other than a copy. And she would have felt bad for him, but she would have pushed her guilt aside and tried not to think about it, even though he also would have loved her and wanted to be with her.

She continued walking down the crowded street, paying enough attention to avoid photobombing some tourists. A man advertising a double decker bus tour of London shouted in her face, but she smiled politely and walked past him.

Trying to calm down, she focused on the sights and sounds of the city. A zeppelin flew overhead, carrying rich businessmen from one conference to another. Grinning kids ran through the streets, narrowly evading her legs as they sprinted between her and another passerby. A couple held hands, grinning at each other in a way that reminded her far too much of her and a certain Time Lord.

She noticed a sign for the London 2012 Olympics, and she smiled. It felt like ages ago that she and the Doctor had enjoyed the Olympic ceremonies after that terrifying ordeal with the Isolus.

Not caring much where she ended up, she turned left, right, then left again. She saw another couple holding hands and staring at each other as if they were the only two beings in the world. She looked away from them as they passed by, glancing instead through the window of a bookshop. The words on one of the spines caught her eye – _A Historie of the Fourteenth Centurie_.

The Doctor had mentioned something about not being able to find a fourteenth century history book, hadn't he? And she felt bad for being so rude to him, so this book would be a good way to apologize.

She opened the red door to the store and peeked inside. She didn't see anyone at the front desk, although she also didn't see much of a front desk.

There weren't any customers in the store either, but there were plenty of books. The air was dusty and dead, as if the store was abandoned. She wondered if it was open right now, or if she'd just walked into a closed shop.

Deciding to check out the book before she left, as she really did think the Doctor would like it, she walked over to the section of the store nearest the window she'd peered through. She found the book on one of the shelves near her eye level.

The book looked relatively old, with a worn leather cover and faded lettering. She picked it up, leafing through it. It contained a ton of information about the time period, which made her wonder how the Doctor had struggled to find any other books with information about it. She thought the Doctor might be right about someone not liking the fourteenth century.

The bookshop owner might know more, if only she could find him. She looked around again and jumped. A stout man with blond curls stood at the other end of the shop, glaring at her as if he was mad at her for being in the store.

Seeing his dated clothing and bow tie, she assumed he was the owner of the shop.

"Um, hi. Can I buy this?" she asked meekly.


	2. Chapter 2

Life was finally going back to normal after the apocalypse-that-wasn't, and Aziraphale couldn't be happier. His bookshop was restored, the world had been saved, and he and Crowley had avoided the wrath of their superiors.

Nothing could possibly make his life any better, he thought as he enjoyed a nice cup of cocoa while relaxing in his store with a novel. Well, except for one thing.

He had known for some time that his feelings for Crowley were stronger than his love for all living things. He loved Crowley in the general sense, of course, but he also cared for him in an entirely different way. Calling it romantic love seemed so demeaning, because it was much more than that.

He adored Crowley. Worshiped him. Would choose him over all others, if it came down to it. His feelings were the source of some consternation in the past, but he couldn't deny that they were there. And now that he no longer had to worry about pleasing Heaven, he could fully accept them.

The only issue with this is that he had absolutely no idea if Crowley felt the same way. Crowley clearly cared for him as a friend. He was willing to run away to Alpha Centauri with him, and he offered to let him stay at his flat. He even did little things for him, like blowing away paint stains and driving home girls whom he'd hit with his Bentley. (Crowley wouldn't drive the speed limit for him, though, as many times as he'd fervently wished for that to happen).

All of those things were very encouraging, but Crowley had never indicated that Aziraphale was anything more than a good friend to him, and Aziraphale was in distress about it.

The worst part was that they'd kissed before, as Aziraphale's mind loved reminding him late at night on the few nights he decided to sleep. As he took a sweet sip of his cocoa and it slid down his throat, he reminisced about the occasion.

It had been a complete accident, before they even knew one another. As no one had invented kissing yet (although Adam and Eve were quickly learning the ropes), neither understood the enormity of what had occurred between them.

They had been standing on the wall of the Garden of Eden, watching the only two humans in existence fight off a lion, when rain started pouring from the sky. Shocked, Aziraphale instinctively covered Crawly with his wing. The demon stared at him, surprised by the action.

Aziraphale blushed, unsure why he had done that.

"Angels protect all creatures. Even evil ones such as yourself," he tried to explain, still fiercely blushing. The demon was different than the others he'd met, he noticed, as the others had all looked and smelled revolting. This one was smooth, confident, and significantly more attractive than his compatriots.

Crawly smirked at the blushing angel's attempts to explain himself. He hadn't yet removed his wing, Crawly observed. The rain was quite irritating, and he actually appreciated the angel's gesture, so he decided not to say anything.

"It's fine, angel. I won't tell your superiors if you don't tell mine."

Aziraphale looked vaguely disgruntled by that. Crawly thought he heard him mutter something about "making deals with a demon already when Earth has only existed for seven days." Crawly's smirk grew wider. The angel's distress was kind of cute. Well, whatever the demonic-sounding synonym for cute was. He didn't think a word like that existed yet.

He heard a huge crash from somewhere very close by and jumped, but, before he could process the sound fully, an angel slammed into him. His back hit the ground and the breath rushed out of his lungs. The angel's body covered his, lips pressing against his cheek as he breathed in and out rather loudly.

After a minute, Aziraphale took a deep breath and pushed himself up, rolling off of Crawly. His lips brushed against Crawly's in the process, and Crawly shivered without knowing why. Another bolt of lightning struck the ground nearby, and Aziraphale visibly flinched, but managed to temper his reaction. He avoided making eye contact with the winded demon chuckling at him.

Crawly sat up.

"Was that your protective instinct again?" he asked as he finally caught his breath. Aziraphale glanced over out of the corner of his eye, trying very hard to glare at him, but as he realized what happened he couldn't help but grin slightly.

"I suppose it was. I can't believe I just tried to sacrifice myself to save a demon."

"Maybe you're on the wrong side, angel," Crawly suggested, receiving another half-hearted glare in response.

They sat on the wall together, watching the first-ever thunderstorm in silence. Aziraphale was astonished by the fact that he had enjoyed the brief interaction with Crawly more than any of his conversations with his fellow angels, while Crawly was recalling the feeling of the angel's lips on his. It felt rather nice, he decided, and he wouldn't mind if it happened again sometime.

Aziraphale looked over at Crawly, and he opened his mouth to speak as a woman walked into his bookshop.

Wait, what? Aziraphale stopped daydreaming and realized that a blonde woman was walking through the aisles of his shop. Displeased, he directed a fearsome, heavenly glare towards her. The glare, which encompassed all of the might of Heaven, had been used throughout humanity's existence by angels all over the globe to convey that customers should stay out of their places of business and leave their books alone.

Well, perhaps Aziraphale was the only angel who had ever used that particular type of glare.

Regardless, he stared very meaningfully at the woman, who still hadn't spotted him, as she picked up his rare _A_ _Historie of the Fourteenth Centurie_ and began leafing through it as if it was a discarded book in a bargain bin. People had absolutely no book-handling skills. While he was very much against wiping out and/or recreating humanity, he wouldn't mind if Adam had given them all basic knowledge of how to properly treat books.

She finally glanced around and made eye contact with him. While most customers were intimidated enough at this point to leave without stealing (well, buying, if you used the technical term, seeing as they did actually pay for them) one of his books, she didn't seem the least bit scared. She stepped towards him.

"Um, hi. Can I buy this?" she asked meekly. Well, maybe he'd scared her a bit, he thought smugly.

"Sorry," he said pseudo-apologetically, "but that one isn't for sale." He said this quite firmly, hoping she'd get the point and leave.

"Then why's it on the shelf?" she asked, partially curious and partially annoyed. He hesitated, mind working overtime to come up with a reasonable explanation. He failed and sighed miserably. He'd just have to convince her that it wasn't worth buying.

"Are you sure you want that one?" he asked cautiously. "It's a rather dull work, if I do say so myself. Just a lot of information about faith, politics, plagues – that sort of thing." In retrospect, he'd actually made the book sound rather interesting.

"I definitely want it. It's for a friend," she said cheerfully, seemingly willfully ignoring his clear reluctance to part with the text. She walked over to him.

"Actually, I had a question. D'you know why there aren't other books on the fourteenth century? My friend has had a lot of trouble finding them."

Ah, that. He'd been hoping she was just a tourist who picked up the book without knowing its significance, but that clearly wasn't the case. Her friend was well informed, at least. He didn't have a good answer. How could he explain that Crowley had destroyed every text about the century a few years ago, when he'd gotten very drunk very quickly one night?

A new documentary about the fourteenth century had just been released to rave reviews, and Crowley had had the misfortune of going to see it. Hell had asked him to tempt a young couple visiting the theater, and he hadn't taken the time to check what movie they were seeing before walking in alongside them.

Once it finished, he was at Aziraphale's shop within minutes, drunkenly ranting about how terrible the movie had been but how the time period was even worse. After half an hour of listening to nonstop complaining, Aziraphale suggested that Crowley just get rid of the documentary. Crowley asked for his help, and, with their combined power, they accidentally ended up erasing not just the documentary, but every piece of information about the time period.

Except, Aziraphale ensured, the book currently sitting in his shop that the woman wished to purchase.

"It's a long story, and it's not very interesting," he said, hoping that would assuage her. She cocked an eyebrow but didn't ask further questions.

"Well, whatever the reason, my friend needs it for a research project, so I'd love to buy it," she said, heading towards the front desk.

One of Aziraphale's angelic senses tingled when she mentioned her friend this time. There was something slightly odd about this woman, although he couldn't tell what it was. It was almost as if her and her friend weren't entirely human. But they didn't seem to have angelic or demonic influences, either, and they definitely weren't some other type of animal.

He'd never encountered anything like this before, and he really wished that Crowley could be here. (He often wished that Crowley was around, but normally not for this reason.)

If there was some new threat to Earth, they both needed to know about it. He really hoped that there wasn't, though. After the terribly eventful eleven years they'd had, he just wanted to relax and enjoy a peaceful century or two with his friend.

Crowley had been over earlier, and they'd lunched together, but he'd left to go "encourage" (or, as Aziraphale surmised, scream at) his plants to grow. Aziraphale couldn't go get his phone and call him without drawing the attention of the young woman, so he had no choice but to simply try talking to her.

(This was one of the occasions, of which there were so few that Aziraphale could count them on one hand, that he was regretting not picking up one of those fancy new smart phones. He had a feeling that a smart phone might be able to help him out in this circumstance, seeing as it was seemingly intelligent and would know to call Crowley for help right now. To be fair, he was rather clueless about the technology, so he could also be completely wrong.)

He tried to use a little of his angelic power to help the woman feel comfortable speaking about her friend and his project. Not in the same way that Crowley had hypnotized Mary Loquacious, of course. It was much more subtle, and he didn't push her to reveal anything she wouldn't have otherwise been uncomfortable saying. He just gently encouraged her to speak in more detail about subjects she wanted to discuss.

"What research is your friend doing?" he asked. "I may be able to recommend some other resources he could use." He smiled at the girl. Honestly, she really seemed quite nice and not threatening in the slightest, other than the strange feeling he had about her. He was still a little wary, though. They had just gotten over a bad bout of apocalypse, after all, not to mention that dreadful affair with the Cybermen a few years back.

"Oh, it's hard to say. He hasn't told me much about it, really. He never tells me much of anything anymore. It's my fault though, so I can't blame 'im." She looked away, and he could tell that something bad had happened with her friend. He could feel the cocktail of negative emotions swirling through her.

"What do you mean? If you don't mind discussing it, of course," he asked.

"It's a long story," she said, smiling as she echoed his earlier sentiments. He beckoned to one of the armchairs in the back, and she took a seat. He sat down across from her, no longer using any angelic influence to motivate her to talk. She seemed to need to talk to someone about it, and he was happy to lend an ear. If it helped him understand who she and her friend were, that would be all the better.

"Well, I met him a few years ago, although it feels like ages now. We've been travelling together, and it's been amazing." She smiled wistfully as she looked over his shoulder.

He could almost see the memories playing across her pupils. He smiled a bit as well, as he could certainly understand enjoying going on adventures with a companion. He and Crowley had many exciting tales from their run-ins with each other throughout the years.

"We've done so many things, seen so many amazing places. Felt like we saved the world a few times, yeah?" she continued. "And I loved it. Loved him, too. But he's changed." She paused, looking away from him again.

"He's not the man I used to know, and I miss him. And I don't know how I can keep loving him when he's different, y'know? Even though I do still love him, it feels wrong. Like I shouldn't love him when I also loved the other him."

Aziraphale couldn't say that he was entirely sure what she meant, but he thought he understood the general gist. It wasn't like Crowley was the same wily old serpent he'd met in the Garden of Eden, for instance. Their time among the humans had changed them both for the better.

He figured Crowley felt the same way. He knew that he'd changed over time as well. He never would have agreed to something like the Arrangement back when he'd first met Crowley. He didn't agree to it for the longest time, viewing it as consorting with the enemy.

He'd also had the misfortune of viewing Crowley as the enemy back then, a mistake which took ages (and ages and ages) to rectify. Crowley's declarations that they could be on their own side had fallen on deaf ears, and he had been faithfully loyal to Heaven even when it couldn't be less concerned about him.

This led him to one inescapable conclusion.

"Change is often a good thing," he said encouragingly. "While it may not seem like he's the same man you knew and loved before, he's still the same deep down." He thought for a moment.

"Except, of course, if you mean that he became abusive or controlling when he changed, in which case you really should leave him, and I'm willing to do whatever you need to assist you with that," he added.

She shook her head quickly.  
"No, nothin' like that! He's still a great guy. Just kind of, I don't know, different." She rubbed her face and sighed. "Sorry, it's just that it's really hard to explain."

He could tell that she was hiding something from him. Something rather big, by the looks of it, and he guessed it could clear everything up. He wasn't going to force it out of her if she didn't want to freely tell him, though, so it seemed like the mystery would remain unsolved for now.

Her phone rang, and she jumped, nearly dropping it onto the floor. She glanced at it, then looked up hastily.

"Sorry, it's my little brother," she said apologetically. "He was supposed to be at a friend's home for a sleepover, but he just threw up so he's coming back home. And my mum and dad are out, so I need to get back to watch him."

She stood up, placing the book on the couch, and turned to walk out the door.

Many years afterwards, he would still be unable to determine what prompted him to speak right then. He often guessed that it had something to do with her kind demeanor and the strange aura she was giving off. Part of him felt drawn to her, as if she was someone that he needed to meet, but another part of him was almost repulsed by her, like meeting her (or possibly her friend) was wrong in some way.

Either way, his angelic nature, combined with her friend's apparent need for the book, overpowered his desire to avoid actually selling any of his books to his customers.

As the woman took a step towards the door, he called out to her.

"Wait, did you still want to buy that book?" he asked, pointing towards the history book. Her eyes widened slightly, as if she knew how unbelievably rare this moment was.

"Yes, very much so," she said, turning back towards him. "It just kinda seemed like you didn't want to sell it."

"Well, I'll sell it to you at the front desk," he said, sounding more cheerful than he actually felt.

They walked together to the front desk, and he asked for some amount of money that sounded good. Considering he could use minor miracles to create cash, he had no need for the money.

He second guessed his decision to sell her the book at the last minute, and instead reached down out of sight.

"Actually, I just remembered that I have this photocopy of the pages that should more than suffice for your friend's research," he offered, looking up at her to see if this would upset her.

She just nodded, not seeming to mind. Relieved, Aziraphale used a small miracle to create the copy, then pulled it out from the desk and handed it to her in exchange for the original. She grinned, flipping through the pages.

"He's gonna love this," she said as she looked through it. Aziraphale smiled warmly back at her, wishing her and her friend the best. She smiled to herself and started towards the door.

She turned when she reached the entrance.

"Ta! And thank you for the copy of the book. I could see the book meant a lot to you, so I appreciate it," she said, smiling at him as she briefly waved goodbye.

He offered a smile to her as well. "Jolly good. I just hope it's as important to you and your friend as it is to me. By the way, I'm Mr. Fell."

"I'm Rose Tyler," she said, then ducked out the door. He was left alone to ponder who exactly Rose Tyler was.

Quite confused by the encounter and eager to speak with Crowley again, he phoned him up and asked if he'd like to get dinner.

"Didn't we just eat lunch together earlier, angel?" Crowley asked, sounding surprised. His tone was one of confusion but not of disdain, and Aziraphale got the impression that he wouldn't be opposed to a second meal together.

"Yes, but I'm a bit peckish, and it's been a hard day at the shop," Aziraphale pleaded. He had a feeling Crowley would give in regardless, but he was always certain to listen to Aziraphale if he used what Crowley had once termed his "puppy dog eyes" (or, in this case, a puppy dog voice). "Someone nearly bought one of my books!"

He could practically hear Crowley roll his eyes over the line. (In reality, although he did roll his eyes, he did so with a fond smile.)

"Aziraphale, you run a bookshop. What did you think the 'shop' part of it meant?" Crowley asked sarcastically, trying to stifle a fit of laughter and failing miserably. Aziraphale glared at him through the phone (which was rather ineffective, if he gave it too much thought, so he decided not to think about it at all).

"Regardless, that's not the point," Aziraphale huffed. "I'd just like to have dinner with you tonight."

After a brief silence, he heard Crowley mutter, "Oh, alright." Aziraphale grinned, fighting the urge to pump his fist triumphantly in a very non-angelic fashion.

"Wonderful! How does fifteen minutes from now at the new Greek restaurant on Greek Street sound?" he asked. "No pun intended, of course." His tummy rumbled, reminding him that it would like to eat sooner rather than later, and he patted it reassuringly.

Crowley agreed, and Aziraphale hung up so he could close up the store and get ready. The strange encounter with Rose Tyler was shoved to the back of his mind as he started thinking about how much he was looking forward to dinner with Crowley. It had only been a few hours, but he missed the old serpent.

Aziraphale showed up five minutes early, as was the norm, and took a seat at one of the tables in the restaurant. It was a bit less fancy than many of the places he and Crowley dined at, as Aziraphale considered himself something of a connoisseur when it came to food, but he had a soft spot for hole-in-the-wall shops and had been wanting to check this one out for a few weeks now.

It was named Greek on Greek, humorously referencing the fact that a Greek restaurant was located on Greek Street. While he had chuckled at the name, he found the references to Greek Street's history plastered all over the walls of the restaurant to be a little much.

Waiting patiently for Crowley, he ordered pita and tzatziki as a starter, scanning through the dining options. There was a woefully small variety of wine choices, so he went with a basic pinot noir.

"Hello, angel," a voice said from behind him as he took a sip of his wine. He grinned.

"Crowley!" he greeted the demon. Crowley smiled at him as he walked to the other side of the table, looking nearly as pleased to see him as Aziraphale felt. Moments of open affection like this gave him hope that Crowley returned his feelings, but he was never brave enough to ask.

Crowley settled into the seat in front of him, ordering a white wine and stealing some of Aziraphale's pita bread.

"Still an angel then?" he asked sarcastically, smirking. Aziraphale glared at him. He was never going to let him live that down. Crowley chuckled at his reaction, then he reassured him that he was, in fact, never going to let him live it down.

Crowley regaled Aziraphale with exciting tales about his plants as they finished the starter (and ended up ordering another, as it was delicious). Apparently, his oldest plant looked like it was going to develop a spot. This was an epic tragedy, as he moaned that there was no way his plants would continue growing so beautifully (he said "adequately," which Aziraphale interpreted as "beautifully") if they lost their leader.

Aziraphale offered to come by his flat and gently whisper supportive aphorisms to it, but Crowley didn't appreciate that idea.

"You'll infect it with your _niceness_," he said, making a face when he said "niceness" that Aziraphale would expect a human to make if someone had suggested to them that dead babies would make a good speed bump.

Aziraphale watched him, slightly smugly, as he saw Crowley start to consider the idea. Crowley had such an expressive face at times. It was one of the things he loved about him.

He was repulsed for a minute, then contemplative as he realized that his way wasn't working and (hopefully) that he really didn't mind Aziraphale's niceness all that much, then he looked sad as he mourned the potential loss of his beloved plants, then he made a sort of grudging face as he accepted that Aziraphale's idea might actually make sense.

"Okay, fine. We can try it your way. But you can't be _too_ nice to it," he warned. Aziraphale chuckled.

"No promises," he said, smirking. He'd known that Crowley would come around eventually. He always did, after all.

Their food arrived, and they stopped talking for a few minutes as they ate their respective meals. Halfway through, Crowley decided he liked Aziraphale's dish (a gyro) better than his youvetsi. Since neither of them _actually_ needed the food to survive, Aziraphale didn't mind letting Crowley steal food off his plate.

He closed his eyes, relishing the taste of a particularly juicy piece of lamb. He chewed it slowly, smiling to himself as the taste washed over his tongue.

"Hey, angel."

He opened his eyes. Crowley was staring at him (he presumed – it was hard to tell with the sunglasses) from across the table. He had a curious look on his face.

"I had an idea. What if, now that we're on our own side and all, you tempted someone, and I did a miracle for someone?"

Aziraphale cocked his head. They'd done that plenty of times, hadn't they? That was what the whole arrangement was, after all.

"Not like that. That wasn't us doing it. Not really. That was just a matter of convenience to make our jobs easier. This would be fun!" he pleaded.

Aziraphale realized that he was just as vulnerable to Crowley's charms as Crowley was to his. He couldn't resist him, not when he was making that face.

"Oh, alright. Since you're letting me talk to your plant, I can give it a try. But nothing too mean! I am still an angel, after all."

Crowley relaxed, lazing back in his chair. He pointed off in the distance.

"So, what'll it be then? Who's the unlucky victim?"

Aziraphale blushed, feeling self-conscious already. While the arrangement had been beneficial to the both of them, he had never particularly liked tempting people. The way Crowley was looking at him did things to him, though, and he felt a strong desire to please as Crowley had recently claimed, Aziraphale was just a little bit of a bastard. Maybe this wouldn't be that bad.

He looked around the shop, trying to decide who to tempt. There was a couple arguing in the corner, seemingly on the verge of breaking up. He wouldn't interfere with that – that was far too personal and invasive, in his opinion.

A little boy pointed eagerly at a piece of baklava, pulling on his father's pants leg and jumping up and down. The father shook his head at him.

That would work! He pointed at them, and Crowley looked over.

"Watch and learn," he said. Crowley raised an eyebrow doubtfully.

The father ordered takeout at the counter, not paying much attention to his child or to the waiter. Suddenly, confetti rained down on him and the boy from some indeterminate place in the ceiling. The waiter looked as confused as the family did.

"Um, apparently you're the hundredth customer," he said, bewildered. "And it says here that you get an entire case of baklava!"

The boy squealed in delight, yelling "thank you" over and over again. The father glared at the waiter as if he suspected this was all a foul scheme dreamt up by his approximately six-year-old son.

The father was incorrect. The scheme had actually been the work of a more than six-thousand-year-old angel. Aziraphale felt bad for the boy. His father didn't seem to be a very kind man. At least some baklava would cheer him up, he hoped.

As the father and son duo walked out slowly, the father struggling under the weight of the baklava, he turned back to Crowley and grinned.

"So, what do you think? That was a cunning trick on my part, was it not?"

Crowley was not amused. He sighed, rather overdramatically in Aziraphale's opinion, and shrugged.

"Well, it wasn't entirely good natured. That's the best I could hope for from you, I suppose." He smirked. "Not bad, angel."

Aziraphale smirked as well. One could say that his smirk was just the slightest bit devilish.

"Thank you. Now, I believe it's time for you to return the favor?"

Crowley's shoulders slumped, which was a sight to see considering how much he was already slouching.

"Yeah, yeah, alright." He glanced around, muttering under his breath. His eyes darted back and forth as he judged whether or not each person was a suitable candidate for a miracle. He quickly ran out of options, and he looked at Aziraphale helplessly.

"Doing good is _hard_," he whined. "Do I have to?"

"Considering it was your idea, I rather think so," Aziraphale said haughtily. If he could do something that wasn't entirely good, Crowley could certainly do something that wasn't entirely evil. Not to mention, again, that it was his idea in the first place.

Crowley looked thoughtful for a moment, scratching the back of his neck nervously. He looked up at Aziraphale, slightly embarrassed.

"Well, it's not a miracle exactly, but I have something you might like. We'll say it counts."

Taking a deep breath, as if he had to steel himself for whatever came next, he pulled a photo album out of his coat pocket. It was small, with just one picture on each page. He pushed it over to Aziraphale then looked away, studying the tilework on their table as if it was the most fascinating thing in existence.

Aziraphale's love for Crowley might have caused him to spontaneously combust if he wasn't an angel. He adored him so much at that moment that he felt like he was going to burst. Crowley had done something nice after all!

He flipped through the pages of the album, gasping when he saw the pictures. They were all of him and Crowley together at various recent points on their adventures. In many, Crowley was staring directly into the camera and making faces, while Aziraphale was looking off to the side. In one taken in his bookshop, Aziraphale was staring straight at the camera but looked extremely confused. Crowley wasn't in that shot.

"It's us," he said, amazed. They had never taken pictures together in the past, because they had always been worried about Heaven and Hell learning about their friendship. Recently, Aziraphale had taken a few self-portraits with Crowley using a small, handheld camera he had acquired, as he didn't care anymore what Heaven thought of their friendship.

But, he realized, all of the pictures in the album had been taken before the aborted apocalypse, so how had Crowley gotten them?

Crowley saw his befuddled face and asked what he was so confused about.

"The photos – where did you get them?" Aziraphale asked, still in shock.

"Remember that fancy square thing you don't understand how to work?" Crowley asked, describing the situation so vaguely that Aziraphale was wondering if he was interpreting it correctly.

"Did you mean your smart phone?" he asked, putting an unnecessarily long space between "smart" and "phone."

Groaning, Crowley nodded. He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out his phone. If you could even call it a phone, Aziraphale groused. It seemed more like a little square piece of glass than a phone.

Now Aziraphale's phone, on the other hand – that was a real phone. It was hefty, big, and firmly attached to the wall with a cable. It looked like phones were supposed to look, in his opinion.

Crowley touched the phone a few times and showed it to Aziraphale. The photos from the album were in it.

"Ah!" Aziraphale said, surprised. "So, you took them with that device?"

Crowley nodded, again looking slightly embarrassed. He put the phone back in his pocket.

"I did tell you a few times that I was trying to take a selfie with you, but you looked so confused by the whole thing. I don't think you knew what I was talking about," he admitted.

Aziraphale thought back over the last few years. There had definitely been times when Crowley had used that odd word and put his device in Aziraphale's face. It all happened so quickly every time, though, that he never understood what was happening. Which explained, he now realized, why he was never looking straight at the camera except for in that one picture.

He flipped to the shot where he was actually looking at the camera and asked Crowley how that happened. He didn't remember taking a picture of himself on the phone.

"That was when I gave you my phone and asked you to Google something for me. Satan knows why I thought that would be a good idea. You managed to take five selfies and delete half my contacts in just under thirty seconds," he replied, making a strained face.

Aziraphale had a vague memory of this, and he apologized to Crowley.

"Eh, it's alright," Crowley said dismissively. "Luckily miracles work on technology. And the pictures were worth the trouble."

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow, looking at the picture again. It was a rather unflattering shot of him, taken from beneath him so his chin took up the majority of the shot. He opened his mouth to ask Crowley about his reasons for liking the picture, but Crowley was staring intensely at the wall and blushing ever so slightly. Aziraphale shut his mouth.

Sometimes, he really wondered if Crowley had feelings for him. If only he could gather up the bravery to mention something. Or even, as humans did, to flirt with him.

He dismissed the thought, not feeling nearly brave enough at the moment. He promised himself that he'd try it at some point, as soon as he felt up to it.

"Well, regardless, I'd like to thank you for this. It's an outstanding gift, and you definitely won this game."

"Of course I did," Crowley said with a lazy grin on his face. "Did you ever doubt me, angel?"

His smug expression gave Aziraphale pause. He started to wonder if the competition had just been a front, so Crowley had an excuse to give him the album. He realized that there was a very high likelihood that that was the case, and he smiled fondly at the demon.

Crowley "paid" the bill, and the two headed back to the bookshop. Crowley drove ridiculously fast in the Bentley, as usual, so Aziraphale spent most of the ride wishing fervently that he wouldn't be discorporated.

He had a feeling that, if either he or Crowley did happen to get discorporated now, neither side would feel particularly inclined to bring them back. Heaven and Hell saw them as something new, and both sides were extremely disturbed by anything new or different.

Luckily, they arrived at the shop without incident. Aziraphale thanked Crowley for the ride and respectable company. Crowley walked him to the door, and they ducked inside.

Aziraphale glanced at the album again. He clutched it to his chest like it was one of his most valued books, which in a way he supposed it was, and thought back on how outstanding the night had been.

And then he remembered that he'd completely forgotten why he'd wanted to meet Crowley for dinner in the first place.

"Oh, something happened earlier today," he said worriedly. Crowley watched him, looking concerned.

"You okay, angel?" he asked Aziraphale.

"Yes, yes. Everything's fine, dear. But there was this girl in the shop – the one who nearly bought a book from me. Well, she did buy it, but it was a photocopy. Anyway, I had a weird feeling about her." He trailed off, unsure how to describe it. How could he explain that she felt, well, otherworldly? He and Crowley both knew that the only beings in existence were God, humans, angels, demons, and animals.

Crowley cocked his head, watching his face as if he was attempting to figure out what Aziraphale was thinking. His serpentine eyes narrowed.

"What's wrong? I can't read your mind, you know," Crowley said, looking frustrated. Aziraphale did know that, so he tried to think of a good way to phrase what he'd felt.

"It's like something about her was wrong. Like she didn't belong here," he explained hesitantly. "I can't think of a better way to describe it."

Crowley looked pensive for a minute.

"Sorry, never felt that before about someone," he said. Aziraphale looked disappointed, but Crowley just shrugged.

"Maybe you just ate something weird?" he asked, joking. Aziraphale glared at him entirely seriously, and he sobered up. "Really, angel, I don't know. But call me next time, okay?"

Aziraphale nodded, and he smiled warmly at the demon. He felt certain that Crowley would feel it too, and maybe they could figure this out together. Despite the fact that they were supposedly on opposite sides, they had always worked remarkably well together.

The warm feelings suffusing his soul gave him the courage he'd been lacking earlier. He decided that this was the moment to make his move. Crowley was being helpful, he was as attractive as ever, and the photo album still tightly grasped in Aziraphale's hands was proof that Crowley had some sort of feelings for him as well.

"Well, see ya," Crowley said offhandedly, starting to turn back towards the door.

"Wait," Aziraphale yelped, not yet ready. Crowley stopped and waited. Aziraphale grasped his shoulder gently, manually spinning him around to face him.

They were close together now, and Aziraphale's hand gave him a physical connection to Crowley. Part of him – the part he kept tightly locked away and never acknowledged to himself (let alone out loud) – wanted to take things further, merging their bodies in a distinctly human fashion. The other part was terrified and wanted to run away.

Settling on a nice compromise, he leaned closer to Crowley and tilted his head up. He thought that Crowley might have looked down slightly, but he second guessed the encounter so often in the following days that he was never certain.

He originally had aimed for Crowley's lips, but he chickened out at the last second, instead softly kissing his cheek.

"Goodnight, dear," he whispered sweetly.

A shocked demon stared back at him, eyes wide. Before he could apologize, the door to his shop slammed shut, and Crowley was gone.

"Oh, dear," Aziraphale murmured to himself. "What did I just do?"

Across the street, a blonde woman in a scorched jacket who had been on her way to the bookshop to hopefully speak with a certain angel witnessed the entire scene. When a lanky figure with ginger hair stormed out of the shop and strode past her, she caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight.

Her jaw dropped.

"Doctor?"


	3. Chapter 3

_Across the street, a blonde woman in a scorched jacket who had been on her way to the bookshop to hopefully speak with a certain angel witnessed the entire scene. When a lanky figure with ginger hair stormed out of the shop and strode past her, she caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight._

_Her jaw dropped._

"_Doctor?" _

*A few hours earlier*

Rose felt hopeful as she entered her house, the copy of the book tucked under her arm. Even if the book was useless to the Doctor, her talk with the strange bookseller had been illuminating.

Mr. Fell clearly had had no idea what she was talking about, so his advice hadn't been that useful, but there was something about him. Just talking to him had made her feel like everything was going to work out in the end. She had no idea how things would work out, and she suspected that her hope was going to fade away sometime soon, but she felt optimistic for now at least.

She had a good feeling about the book as well. Since it had been so difficult to find, some of the information in it had to be useful.

Tony was sitting on the couch when she walked in, a blanket draped over his shoulders. The Doctor sat with him, holding a glass of water and looking worriedly at him.

He glanced at Rose when she walked in, then looked away. Standing up, he continued to avoid eye contact.

"He has a fever but hasn't vomited again. I gave him some water and medicine and said he should rest, but he didn't have any luck sleeping, so I've been sitting with him," he said quickly, in a monotone voice. She felt terrible for putting him in such a bad mood. He didn't deserve it, and she knew that.

"Thanks for lookin' after him. And can we talk in a bit?" she asked quietly, not wanting Tony to hear that they'd been fighting.

The Doctor made eye contact with her for the first time since she'd walked in. He looked surprised, as if he hadn't expected her to want anything to do with him. Considering the last thing she'd said to him was that she wouldn't have tried to find him if he'd been left alone in a different universe, she couldn't blame him. She needed to make it up to him, but first she had to take care of Tony.

He nodded, muttered, "I'll be in my room," then walked upstairs.

Turning to Tony, she sat down next to him on the couch, running a hand through his hair.

"Hey, Tony," she whispered sympathetically. "How are you feeling?"

He moaned in response, and she felt her heart break. Poor kid. She had terrible memories of being sick as a child and acting the exact same way. She tugged him against her side, running a hand up his arm. He leaned into her, shivering.

After he'd sipped the water a few more times, she took it from him and led him upstairs to his room slowly. He groaned a few times, and she worried that they'd have to make a beeline for the toilet, but he managed to get back to his room in one piece.

She tucked him into bed and nearly kissed him on the head, then decided against it. The last thing she needed right now was to get sick.

Reminding him that she was just a few doors down if he needed anything during the night, she gave him one last sympathetic look then headed out of his room. She walked down the hallway, pausing as she reached the Doctor's room. She heard noises inside. He was likely trying to take some electronic device apart again, or possibly put it back together. Even after years at Torchwood, she still wasn't great with hardware. She'd always been better with people than machines.

She gripped the book tightly and took a deep breath, then knocked on his door.

The Doctor was tired of living this half-life. Rose was right – he didn't fit in as a human. She didn't want him anymore, and he didn't want to be a burden on her anymore. Their fight earlier had put him in an awful mood, and if Tony hadn't gotten sick, he doubted he would have emerged from his room the rest of the night.

He was lying in bed under his blankets, drilling a hole in an old smartphone. There was no reason to drill the hole, and it wouldn't lead to him growing the TARDIS any faster, but he didn't care at the moment. He used to be the Oncoming Storm, but he'd been reduced to suffering through a miserable existence as a landlocked hermit. It was a worthless life for a worthless man.

Not to mention that he was ruining Rose's life as well. The other Doctor had stuck them here together, thinking that she'd want to be with him because he looked like the Doctor she knew and loved, but both he and Rose knew that he wasn't that man. He was genocidal, boring, and a failure, among other negative qualities. He realized earlier that evening that it would be best for Rose if he left and found somewhere else to live, so she wouldn't be continuously reminded of what she'd lost.

Overwhelmed by his thoughts, he mindlessly kept drilling holes into the phone. A knock rang out, surprising him, and he nearly drilled into his hand. He turned the drill off just in time, and he readied himself for the awkward encounter that was about to take place.

"You can come in," he called out, not feeling like getting out of the bed. She opened the door cautiously and spotted him. Her face fell when she saw him in bed.

She probably thought that he looked pathetic, he thought wryly. It made sense, as this version of himself really was pathetic.

She walked over to the bed, sitting down on the corner gingerly. She smiled at him, playing with something in her hands.

"Hey," she ventured, sounding uncertain. He tried to smile in response, but his face refused. It came out as more of a grimace. He really didn't want to be here. How he longed for his TARDIS right now, so he could run away. That's what he'd always done, really. He ran away from his problems for as long as he could, ever since he was a child.

"Doctor," Rose said worriedly. "What's on your mind?"

"Oh, Rose, you don't want to know," he said, chuckling humorlessly. Sighing, he sat up against the headboard. Before she had a chance to say anything else, he started to talk, as he knew that her compassion would make him fall in love with her all over again.

"I need to leave," he spit out abruptly. It wasn't how he'd planned to phrase it, insofar as he'd halfheartedly planned out the conversation after their fight, but it got the point across. Her mouth fell open slightly, and she shook her head without even realizing she was doing so.

"Doctor, I'm so sorry," she began. "Please, don't leave. I shouldn't have said that I would have abandoned you. At the time, I think I would have, but that was so wrong of me." Her eyes pleaded with him to listen to her. He couldn't help but fall victim to her compassion. He felt his love for her, which he'd bottled up inside himself while he was overcome with anger, seep out and eat away at his cold indifference. Outwardly, his eyes started to water slightly.

Rose grasped his hands in hers. It was the first time she'd willingly initiated contact with him ever since the kiss. He held them firmly, feeling like they were his lifeline in the sea of emotions he'd been drowning in.

"But you don't want me," he said desperately, as if he was pleading with her to confirm his suspicions. "You said so. And all I do is make you think about him."

"I do think about him," she replied softly. "And being with you is hard sometimes, yeah. But I don't want you to go. It's hard, but we can work through it together. No more running away, alright?" She squeezed his hands tightly, then showed him the thing she'd been holding in her lap.

It just looked like a bunch of printer paper, at first, but then he read the words on the paper. _A Brief Historie of the Fourteenth Centurie_. His eyes widened. Could it be a history book on the missing century? One that might finally contain a clue to the whereabouts of his counterpart and of Gallifrey?

"Rose, this is brilliant," he whispered, flipping through the pages eagerly. He suspected that there was a reason information about the era had been so difficult to find. If anyone could erase all records of an entire century, it was a Time Lord. There had to be something in this text, some clue.

"How did you find it?" he asked curiously, still reading the text. Rose tucked her hair behind her ear, almost as if she was nervous.

"Well, it was really strange, actually. There was this bookseller and a little bookshop—"

"What's strange about that?" he asked, interrupting her. "I love books and I really love little shops!" She laughed, and the sound lifted his spirits even further. Oh, how he missed that laugh.

"Shut up," she said, still chuckling. "You didn't let me finish."

He mimed zipping his lips together and throwing away the key, to her amusement, then switched his focus to the book again.

"I passed by this bookshop, and I saw this book through the window. Of course, I remembered you talking about it and wanted something that could cheer you up-"

"Great idea!" he said brightly, again interrupting her. "I'm very cheery now! As cheered up as can be." He grinned at her, but it faded when she glared at him. Oh, right. He was supposed to be letting her speak.

"_Anyway_," she said pointedly. "I walked in and picked it up, then I look up and this man is glaring at me! It was like he didn't want me to buy the book or somethin'." She glanced at him, as if she was expecting him to interrupt again, but he didn't as he was too busy reading. One skill he'd retained from his Time Lord form was his ability to read much faster than a human when he felt like it. Right now, he'd skimmed through about a tenth of the book.

"I asked if I can buy the book, but he said it's not for sale. Then we got to talking for a bit, and he decided to sell it to me, but he actually just meant the photocopied version. Now that I think about it, it was kind of strange that he had that…" She trailed off, and the Doctor was too preoccupied by the book to notice.

"Doctor? You listening?" she asked, smirking. She poked his shoulder, and he looked up abruptly.

"Oh, sorry! You were talking about buying the book, right?" She rolled her eyes fondly and continued.

"Yeah, pretty much. Well, the bookseller got really cagey when I asked why there were so few books about the fourteenth century. He said it was a long story and seemed like he didn't want to tell me. There's something odd, or maybe Ood, about this world I think."

He chuckled at the Ood joke, which never lost its appeal no matter how many times they made it, then gasped as his eyes fell on something of interest. He read the text on the page again, then reread it once more just to be sure.

It hadn't changed. The text stated, "A document written by an unknown author, found in the remains of a small 14th century building in the Gothic architectural style, contains the names of many unknown phenomena. The names include 'Gallifrey' and 'Alpha Centauri', among others. This represents an early use of 'Alpha Centauri', previously thought to first be coined in 1603. The author is still unaware of the meaning of 'Gallifrey'."

"Rose!" the Doctor shouted, and Rose stopped talking mid-sentence. He handed her the book, pointing at the text, and her mouth fell open as she read it.

"Do you think the Doctor wrote that? The one in this universe, I mean?" she asked him after she'd had a minute to process the discovery. He shrugged.

"The Doctor, another Time Lord. Who knows? Regardless, it means that Gallifrey exists here, meaning so do the Time Lords. And, even more importantly, so do TARDISes!"

Laughing with joy, Rose hugged the Doctor tightly. He hugged back. He wasn't sure how this would end for them, but their exile finally seemed to be coming to an end, and that was something to celebrate.

After a long moment, the longest he thought they'd physically been in contact with one another since their arrival in this universe, she pulled back. Her eyes were lit up, like they always were when they were off on a particularly interesting adventure.

"I bet we'll finally find them," she said, grinning. Her tongue stuck out from between her teeth, in a fashion that he always found extraordinarily adorable. He grinned a toothy smile back at her.

She settled next to him, looking over his shoulder as they read more of the book. He read at a human pace so she could keep up. The first few pages made no reference to the strange letter, but the sixth page they read had a brief note about it.

"Historians have been unable to identify the authors of most of the documents in this section, hence the chapter title 'Unidentified Archaeological Finds'," the book stated. "However, a few texts have clues to their authors that researchers have been unable to interpret… The note containing mysterious names like 'Gallifrey' has a name written in the top-right corner – 'Mr. Fell'. Scientists have been unable to identify who this man was but speculate that the note was addressed to him. A picture is included in Appendix C. Next, a book found in -"

Rose jumped off the bed, surprising the Doctor. He cocked his head, wondering what she was so startled by. She smiled at him reassuringly.

"I have a few questions to ask that bookseller, but I'll be back in a mo." She hugged him one more time, her face alight with the same hope that he knew was reflected on his own. She jumped off the bed and sprinted out the door.

He blinked a couple times, then he opened the book up and started reading again. He was going to read the book cover to cover and find every last reference to Gallifrey.

Rose thought she'd finally figured everything out. The bookseller was connected to all of this, which explained why he'd been so opposed to her buying the book. He may have been a Time Lord himself, although he seemed far too earthly for that to be the case. More likely, his ancestor had met the Doctor, and that was the Mr. Fell mentioned in the history book. Maybe he was trying to protect the Doctor's identity, or he was just protective over a book that mentioned one of his ancestors. It made more sense than before, at least.

She still had a lot to work through with the Doctor, but she thought that the worst of it was over. She vowed to be more honest with him from here on out, and to start at least treating him as a friend again. Her other Doctor couldn't possibly be opposed to that.

While she had been grieving for what she'd lost, she'd badly hurt one version of her best friend and the love of her life. She was just starting to realize how much pain she had caused him, and it was hard for her to process. She had been a huge arse to him, and he must have felt cut off from the last part of his life that had seemed normal. She had lived in the alternate universe for long enough to get used to it and develop a life here, but that wasn't the case for him. He'd lost everything, and she'd ensured that he lost her too.

She didn't plan to go around snogging him now or anything, as much as she wanted to at times, but she could at least spend time with him, hang out as good friends, that sort of thing. It would be good for the both of them, she thought.

And now that they had a link to the Doctor, she thought that she could solve the mystery tonight and they could finally find a way to return to the other universe. After her terrible behavior over the last few months, it was the least she could do for him.

As she considered this, she sped through the streets of London. The bookshop wasn't far from their house, although she was starting to realize that it wasn't necessarily open. There had been a sign with very strange hours on it in the door of the shop, which she hadn't given much thought to the first time she'd visited. Considering it was a small bookshop and nearly 9 pm, it would almost be more surprising if the shop was still open at this hour than if it wasn't.

Despite this possible setback, she was already almost there, so she wasn't going to turn back until she at least checked the shop out. She reached it in record time, but was dismayed to see that it did, in fact, seem to be closed.

Disappointed but not shocked, she walked up to the window to look at the hours. They were the most erratic hours she'd ever seen, which likely deterred potential customers. However, one part of the sign stated, "I might occasionally keep the shop open until 8 or 9 at night," so she felt justified in coming by. It was 8:55, which meant that there had been a small chance Mr. Fell would still be in the shop. He was a strange character, alright.

Sighing, she decided to come back tomorrow. She had grown used to not having to wait for things to happen after years of having access to the TARDIS, but she could wait one more night. It might be better if she came by with the Doctor, anyway.

After she'd crossed the street, she heard a vehicle pull up next to the bookshop. The road was a no parking zone, so she figured it was just a taxicab picking someone up or dropping someone off.

"Thank you for the ride and lovely company," a polite, very English-sounding voice said. It was the voice of a certain bookseller, and she spun around to watch. Another man was with him, but he was shrouded by shadows, so she couldn't make out his features. Both men walked into the bookshop and shut the door.

She could see them inside. Mr. Fell talked to the other man, who had his back to the door. Mr. Fell seemed worried at first, making a nervous face, but then got upset. After a moment, he got over whatever had bothered him, and he smiled at the man affectionately. The man turned away to leave, but Mr. Fell looked distressed and grabbed his shoulder, spinning him back around and leaning in close. She thought they were going to snog at first, but he just kissed his cheek lightly. The mysterious man turned and quickly left the building.

Had she just witnessed a lover's quarrel? She wondered who the other man had been. She didn't have to wonder long, as she saw him leave the shop. He was lanky and very ginger, although she still couldn't make out his face.

She smiled, as she always did whenever she noticed a ginger man with the Doctor's body shape. He had always wanted to be ginger so badly. The ginger man in question seemed like he couldn't care less about other people wanting to be like him, although many people probably did. He strode (swaggered would be a more appropriate word – his walk was so smooth that he almost appeared boneless) across the street towards her.

As the moonlight hit him at a certain angel, she finally got a good glimpse of his face. And gasped.

He had dark sunglasses on, didn't look like he'd enjoy a fun night snuggling and watching movies, looked a bit older than she was used to, and was (again) very ginger. But, despite all that, she knew who he was. He was the Doctor.

"Doctor?" she choked out.

The Ginger Doctor glanced at her, cocking his head in confusion at her outburst. He looked away again, probably figuring she'd been calling out to someone else (or just talking to herself, as some people were wont to do), and continued walking past her. She turned and sprinted towards him, but he was walking almost inhumanly quickly, and she failed to reach him. She yelled his name again, but he ignored her. He reached his car and jumped into it, slamming the door aggressively then zooming off into the distance.

Now that she was thinking about it, he'd parked his car next to the bookshop earlier, hadn't he? But it had somehow moved a block away, as if he wanted to have some space for his dramatic exit. Time Lords in this universe had some interesting skills.

He must not go by the name "the Doctor," she decided. The alternative was that he'd heard her, recognized his nickname, and ignored her, but she was hoping that that wasn't the case. To be fair, she had no idea what this Doctor was like or what he was capable of in this universe, so that might have been what happened.

She stood there for a minute, still picturing his face. There really was a Doctor here. Time Lords existed here, and she could finally find a way back to her universe. Her problems were all about to be solved.

Realizing that her best chance to learn more about this universe's Doctor was from Mr. Fell, she turned back and ran across the street. A cab nearly hit her, and the driver screamed obscenities at her, but she just apologized and kept going. She really hoped that he felt like talking.

The bookshop door was still closed, but there was a faint light indoors, as if Mr. Fell had turned on a lamp in the back of the store. That at least meant that he hadn't retired for the night.

She knocked on the door, loud enough that he'd be able to hear it from the back.

"We're closed!" a faint, muffled voice yelled.

"Well, I realize that," she grumbled, knocking again. Considering how intimately he seemed to know the Time Lord, he had to have the information she needed.

If this Doctor was anything like her Doctor, he'd understand that she didn't belong in this universe and he'd want to help her return to her own. She had to learn more about him. Was he kind? Cruel? Had Gallifrey been lost? She had so many questions, and Mr. Fell had been friendly to her before, so she hoped he'd be willing to share a little bit about the Time Lord.

She was starting to consider trying something other than knocking, as her hand was beginning to ache. As the thought crossed her mind, the door opened. Her fist was raised in the air, ready to knock again, so she hastily drew it back.

A stressed, tired-looking Mr. Fell watched her warily from the doorway.

"We're closed," he said again, slightly testily. His encounter with the Doctor earlier must have left him in a poor mood, she surmised.

She considered the best way to go about this, then decided on a compassionate approach.

"I know, but I was coming by to ask you a question when I saw what happened with that man. He looked like he was upset, and you seem pretty bothered too. I just wanted to see if you were alright," she said, smiling at him. She was being honest, as his current attitude was concerning.

His expression softened at her explanation, and he stepped aside.

"Well, I would appreciate a chance to talk about it. It's not like I have many friends other than Crowley," he said sadly. "Come in, and I'll make us both a nice cup of cocoa. I could use something comforting."

That sounded wonderful to her, so she entered the shop. He pointed to one of the couches in the back of the store, then wandered off to make them both hot chocolate.

While she waited for him to return, she looked around at the shop. There were so many books laying around, and she wondered if any of them had as interesting stories as the history book she'd picked up. A few had intriguing titles, and she longed to pick one up and browse through it, but she didn't want to make the bookseller's mood any worse. The Doctor would love visiting a shop like this, so full of history and knowledge. It seemed like this universe's Doctor was similar in that regard.

Mr. Fell came back, handing her a mug of hot chocolate and a coaster. Taking a seat on the couch across from her, he settled in. He raised his lips to take a sip of his cocoa, and she stopped herself from yelling at him to wait until it had cooled. Even though her cocoa was still far too hot to drink, he had no reaction to his. He must have made his first, she decided.

"So," he said nervously, crossing then uncrossing his legs, "you saw that unfortunate incident earlier?"

"Yeah," she said gently. "I saw you kiss another man on the cheek, then he got scared and ran out."

Mr. Fell grimaced, nodding in response.

"I didn't really accept it for a while, but I think I have a bit of a crush on that man. His name is Anthony J. Crowley. He goes by Crowley usually." She nodded encouragingly in response.

Crowley. She rolled the name around in her mouth. It didn't fit her version of the Doctor, but the name might have been perfect for this Doctor.

"Actually, that's not true," Mr. Fell clarified. "It's not a bit of a crush. It's really more that I've had feelings for him for a very long time but was too worried about what others would think to know what to do about it."

"How long have you liked him?" she asked curiously. She could relate to having feelings for someone but never acting on them, as her and her Doctor had danced around their feelings for each other for years without ever explicitly acknowledging them.

"A while. For over six… six years," he answered hesitantly. He'd paused after saying six, as if he was going to add more to the number. That made her think that he could know Crowley was older than he appeared, or possibly that he could actually be a Time Lord himself. She didn't want to ask him too directly, however, as she didn't want to scare him on the off chance she was imagining things.

"I know the feeling," she said sympathetically.

Mr. Fell fidgeted with his bow tie, looking nervous.

"I decided to act on those feelings earlier. Take the bull by the horns and all that. He just looked so kissable, and we'd had such a nice date. Well, maybe it wasn't a date for him. Maybe none of our meals together are. And that album was such a sweet gesture…"

Mr. Fell stared off into the distance, smiling fondly at a bookshelf. Rose decided he was most definitely in love with Crowley. It seemed like Crowley had feelings for him as well, but it was difficult to tell from just Mr. Fell's perspective. She needed more information.

"What album?" she asked him. He looked back at her, as if he'd briefly forgotten that she was there.

"Oh, he gave me a present. That wily old serpent - that's just a fun nickname I have for him – made it seem like it was just part of a game, but I really hope it wasn't. He made an album with pictures of the two of us that he took on his smart phone. I think he called them 'self-ies'."

Rose tried not to grimace at his awkward pronunciation of 'smart phone' and 'selfies', but she couldn't help herself. He noticed but didn't seem to mind.

"I'm not the best with all this fancy new technology," he explained self-deprecatingly. She couldn't judge him, as she'd seen seemingly impossible technology from the future that she'd probably never understand. Even the TARDIS was still a complete mystery to her, and she'd lived in it for years.

"I think the album was definitely a gift," she reassured him, and he smiled. Crowley seemed to love him back, and a photo album gifted over a shared meal was undoubtedly romantic.

"It sounds as if he has feelings for you," she continued, "although he might not know about them yet. Were you trying to kiss him tonight?" She worried he'd be reluctant to talk about what had happened, and he did look a little embarrassed, but he didn't shy away from discussing it.

"Yes. I couldn't help myself anymore," Mr. Fell sighed. "I wanted to tell him how I felt during dinner but couldn't push myself to do it, so I just ended up kissing him on the cheek right as he was leaving my shop. And then he panicked and ran off. I ruined everything…"

Rose doubted that was true, based on the evidence, but the poor bookseller looked so despondent that she'd be hard-pressed to convince him otherwise.

As she thought of something to say to him to help cheer him up a bit, the bookshop doors opened again.

The Doctor entered, followed by Crowley. Both were glaring at each other.

"What in the Heavens?" Mr. Fell asked faintly.

Crowley pointed at the two of them, and Rose looked over at Mr. Fell guiltily.

"We have a lot to talk about," Crowley said, and the Doctor nodded in agreement.


	4. Chapter 4

_The Doctor entered, followed by Crowley. Both were glaring at each other._

"_What in the Heavens?" Mr. Fell asked faintly._

_Crowley pointed at the two of them, and Rose looked over at Mr. Fell guiltily._

"_We have a lot to talk about," he said._

*Thirty minutes earlier*

Crowley was furious at himself, Aziraphale, and the whole blasted universe. His surroundings blurred by as he drove at over 100 miles per hour through central London, blaring Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" at full volume.

_I gotta be cool, relax, get hip_

_And get on my tracks_

_Take a back seat, hitch-hike_

_And take a long ride on my motorbike_

_Until I'm ready (Ready Freddie)_

_Crazy little thing called love_

He groaned. He adored his Bentley, but why was it playing this song? He could ride for as long as he wanted, but he'd never be ready to deal with his feelings. Not when Aziraphale didn't return them.

He'd loved the stupid angel for so long, ever since he'd run into him in that garden. The problem with his love is that it wasn't simple and straightforward like human love. Humans loved passionately, sure, but only to a certain extent. Their tiny bodies had a maximum amount of love that they could hold. Even the most kind, selfless humans could only extend that love so far. Angels, and by extension demons, were different.

His body was a vessel for his pure form, which stretched far beyond the limits of his material existence. He was miles wide and miles tall, and his love for Aziraphale had gradually grown to the point that it encompassed all of that space and more.

And Aziraphale, being a creature of love that was far more attuned to sensing it than most angels (because most angels cared more about Heavenly bureaucracy, their endless paperwork, and the Great War than they ever did about loving God's creatures), would have noticed Crowley's love immediately. Considering that Aziraphale didn't feel the same way, and that whatever their relationship was, it was purely platonic in nature, he doubted that would have gone over well with the angel.

As a result, Crowley had endeavored for centuries upon centuries to hide his love. He'd compressed it into a tiny ball and shoved it deep down inside himself, where it wouldn't cause any trouble and would only present itself in minor ways, like through blowing away paint stains and saving prophetic books from destruction. Those acts could be interpreted as merely being friendly, so his friendship with Aziraphale was protected.

It had worked well for millennia, until Aziraphale had gone and gotten himself discorporated. Crowley couldn't help himself as he kneeled in the ashes of the bookshop. Aziraphale had been killed, and his reason for existing had vanished. His love broke free of its constraints, overwhelming him with its intensity. He couldn't pretend any longer that he didn't love the angel. Without his body, Aziraphale had been unable to detect Crowley's love when he showed up in the bar. That had been for the best, as Crowley was wankered at the time and wasn't hiding his feelings in the slightest. Even the birds outside the bar could sense them, and they'd been singing sweet love songs to him.

Since then, he'd managed to keep his feelings contained again, but it was far more difficult than it used to be. He saw Aziraphale daily now, and he loved him more than ever.

And then Aziraphale had to go and kiss him. Technically, he'd kissed his cheek, but that made little difference to Crowley. Although it had been six thousand years, he'd never forgotten the feeling of Aziraphale's lips on his skin. When Aziraphale had kissed him on the cheek, he felt his control slipping. He wanted to kneel in front of the angel and pledge himself to him, whisper over and over again that he loved him as he kissed him, knocked him to the floor, and had his way with him.

And of course, Aziraphale wanted nothing of the sort, simply seeing the kiss as a polite parting gesture. So, Crowley panicked, getting himself as far away from Aziraphale as quickly as humanly (demonically?) possible, which entailed running out of the bookshop and speeding off.

That led him to now. He'd been driving around aimlessly for around 20 minutes. Focusing on driving quickly without getting in a wreck kept him from thinking too much about Aziraphale and the wreck he'd already made of his life.

It wasn't Aziraphale's fault. Not really, at least. He couldn't know that something like this would throw Crowley off so much. For a while, Crowley had been upset that Aziraphale didn't return his affections, but he'd gotten over that about 4,500 years ago. Ever since, he'd just been grateful to be in Aziraphale's company and happy that they shared a friendship/bond/however you wanted to describe it. He was fine with it. Honestly.

But, after something like this, he couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if they had something more. Humanity was obsessed with love. You could almost say they were madly in love with it. They wrote books about it, sang songs describing how it felt, and fell in and out of it throughout their lives. Crowley knew how powerful love was, but he couldn't imagine how much more intense it would feel if it was requited.

Swerving to avoid an idiotic pedestrian who'd had the gall to try to run across the street with a stroller, he yelled rude words at her and hoped her child would be less of an imbecile than she was if it survived to adulthood.

He missed Aziraphale, he realized. He would have had something slightly snarky and yet equally loving and concerned (and adorable, as pretty much everything Aziraphale said was adorable, not that Crowley would ever say that out loud) to say about the incident that had just occurred. Crowley really didn't want to part for the night on such an awkward note. And after spending 25 minutes speeding around the city, he felt no closer to figuring out an answer than he'd been when he jumped in his car. Maybe he could just play it off as being uncomfortable with physical contact. Or he could make up some story about how he hated cheek kisses. Satan knows there had to be _something_ he could come up with to explain his strong reaction to Aziraphale's gesture.

Deciding impulsively that he'd figure it out when he got there, he slammed on his brakes, twisted his wheel to the left, and turned back towards the bookshop.

When he arrived, he regretted not having put any thought into what he was going to say. Aziraphale's shop hung ominously over his head, warning him of the unpleasant encounter he was likely about to have. Taking a deep breath, he parked his car on the sidewalk and walked to the door.

A man stood in front of it, bending over and peering at the hours sign. Crowley strode past him, pushing him to the side.

"It's closed," he said dismissively, then got ready to miracle the door open.

"What?" the man asked, sounding shocked. Crowley sighed. Some humans really needed to get their hearing checked.

"I said, it's closed," he emphasized more loudly.

"_What?_" the man asked for a second time. Crowley rolled his eyes, then glanced at him. The man had brown hair that stuck up in all directions, brown non-serpentine eyes, and a face that exactly resembled his own (although it looked slightly younger). Well, he understood the other man's reaction now.

"_WHAT?_" the man asked again, unnecessarily loudly. Crowley stared at his doppelganger, very confused. He didn't feel the urge to scream at him, but he was certainly baffled by the situation. The man was giving off a weird vibe, too, as if something wasn't quite right about him.

"You look like me," he said in a questioning tone. His lookalike cocked his head and reached a hand towards him, removing his sunglasses. He leaned forward, studying his eyes as if Crowley was some sort of specimen.

"Oh, I wish I had my sonic screwdriver right about now so I could analyze you. It looks like I'm some sort of reptilian-Time Lord hybrid," he muttered. Crowley glared at him, not understanding most of that sentence, and grabbed his sunglasses back. Returning them to their rightful position on his face, he took a step back from the strange man.

The man took a step forward and, without any preamble, licked his cheek. Crowley made a disgusted noise and staggered backwards reflexively. He wiped the long stripe of slobber off of his face, feeling grossed out by his human counterpart.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, not entirely sure if he wanted to know. The man licked his lips, looking contemplative.

"Well, apparently that doesn't work as well in this body as it used to in my other one," he muttered. "Either that or I've never tasted something like you before."

"Are you from Hell? Or Heaven?" Crowley asked testily. Maybe the man was some weird copy of him meant for Aziraphale, so Heaven could get their revenge and drag Aziraphale away. He knew Aziraphale wouldn't be fooled, though, as the man was nothing like him, and there was obviously something very wrong with him.

"What?" the other man asked again. "No, of course not. Apparently, I'm a religious reptilian-Time Lord hybrid," he muttered to himself. He leaned forward again as if to study him further, and Crowley stepped further back. Not caring about his obvious discomfort, his lookalike took another step towards him.

The man stared at him curiously for a second, then his expression changed, becoming much colder. Only the worst types of humans made faces like that, and Crowley quickly realized that this man couldn't be from Heaven or Hell. No angel or demon could ever hope to top the cruelty of humanity (or compassion, for that matter, although Aziraphale was a notable exception).

"I know why you're here, and why Rose came here," the man said darkly. "She couldn't love this version of me because I'm a fake, so she found my copy in this universe instead. You're here to meet her, aren't you." He didn't phrase it as a question.

Crowley shook his head hastily.

"Look, I don't know who you are, why you look like me, or who Rose is. Alright? And whoever she is, I doubt she'd love me. You saw my eyes. No human's going to love that."

The other man cocked his head, considering this.

"Eh. Alright," he acquiesced. The darkness from earlier dissipated, and his eyes looked lighter. "Oi, don't knock Rose! She's more open-minded than you give her credit for. She's seen plenty of aliens who look stranger than you." Crowley put his hands up defensively. He still had no idea who this Rose even was.

"Hope she hasn't gone off and snogged any of them," the other man said as an afterthought. "Also, I'm the Doctor."

The Doctor reached a hand out to Crowley. Slightly worried by his sudden mood swings, Crowley gingerly took the hand and shook it.

"Crowley," he responded. The Doctor nodded, then stepped close to him again. He grabbed a chunk of Crowley's hair and studied it with a dissatisfied expression.

"I can't believe you're ginger," he said, sounding oddly frustrated about this. Crowley had seen a lot of eccentric humans throughout his six-thousand years on the planet, but this one may have been the strangest of all.

Crowley reached up, yanking the other man's hand off of his head. Did this man have any regard for personal space?

The Doctor glared at him, apparently rather upset about the whole ginger thing.

"Anyway, I don't have time for this right now. I'm here to see Rose," he declared, finally leaving Crowley alone. He walked off and tried the door, then paused awkwardly when he realized it was locked.

Well, they could both agree on one thing. He didn't have time to deal with this either. He stepped over to the door and, with an unnecessary (but extremely satisfying) flourish of his hand, unlocked it.

The Doctor gave him a rather jealous look, then pushed past him so he could enter the room first. Crowley stared menacingly at his back then followed him in.

There were two Crowleys in his shop, and Aziraphale wondered if he was hallucinating. He subsequently wondered if angels could hallucinate but shoved that thought aside for another time. One looked like a Crowley was supposed to look, while the other was dressed in a blue shirt and blue pants and had startlingly normal brown eyes.

"What in the Heavens?" Aziraphale asked faintly.

The Crowley that was dressed properly gave him a concerned look, as if he worried he was about to actually faint. Aziraphale smiled at him reassuringly. Crowley pointed at him and Rose.

"We have a lot to talk about," he stated firmly. Aziraphale most certainly agreed with this sentiment. How had Crowley found a copy of himself? He hadn't a clue that one had even existed. Plus, there was the whole other matter of Crowley running off because Aziraphale had expressed his feelings for him, although Aziraphale didn't exactly want to discuss that in front of others.

Rose looked guiltily at him. Had she somehow known about this? He couldn't see how she could have. She had known about the inner turmoil he'd been going through regarding what had just happened earlier with Crowley, so that probably explained her guilty expression. Considering that there was a second Crowley here, Aziraphale decided to focus on that issue right now and address his personal problems later.

He beckoned the two Crowleys over to a couch, then his angelic (or British, as a result of spending so much time in the UK) instincts took over as he realized he hadn't offered either of the demons something to drink.

He sprung up, intending to correct that.

"Would you like a drink?" he asked politely.

The Crowley-that-looked-like-Crowley stared at him as if he had two heads, while the non-Crowley Crowley nodded enthusiastically.

"I'd love a cup of tea with two sugars, thanks!" he said, grinning. The proper Crowley looked over at him.

"Really? You want tea at a time like this?" The odd Crowley shrugged helplessly. Aziraphale made tea for him, then sat back down. Rose had watched the proceedings contemplatively, and she seemed far less confused than he was. Maybe she somehow had known about this in advance.

Now that he thought about it, he felt the same uncomfortable aura from the other Crowley that he felt from her, as if neither one of them belonged here. They likely knew each other, then.

Rose leaned forward, smiling at everyone. Despite her aura, he really felt quite relaxed around her for the most part, and he trusted her to tell the truth about this.

"So, introductions. I'm Rose Tyler, a friend of the Doctor," she said to Crowley, nodding towards the non-Crowley. "And that's the Doctor over there." What a strange name, Aziraphale thought. He wondered to himself who this doctor was and what he was a doctor of, but didn't want to interrupt. "You're probably wondering what's goin' on, yeah?" she guessed, looking at him and the proper Crowley. They both nodded. Aziraphale was more confused than he'd been when Crowley had lost the antichrist, as that at least had a reasonable explanation. He couldn't think of anything that could explain this situation.

"Me and the Doctor aren't from this universe," she explained. "We're from another one. Although there's actually another version of him in that universe, but that's beside the point."

Crowley and Aziraphale shared a baffled look. How many of him were there? Apparently, there were Crowleys everywhere.

The man who was apparently called the Doctor took over the explanation. "We came into your universe before, when the Cybermen were attacking. Or at least the other version of me did. I wasn't born yet. Well, I sort of was, but I was just a disembodied hand…" He trailed off as Rose very pointedly kicked him in the shin, wordlessly telling him to focus. This version of Crowley was rather absentminded, Aziraphale noted. He liked his Crowley better.

"Right. Well, anyway, we came back here again a few months ago. We've been stuck here ever since, and the walls between the universes are closed," he finished.

Crowley raised a hand, getting their attention. He looked as confused as Aziraphale did.

"So… universes. How many of them are there? I thought God only made the one." Aziraphale had been wondering the same thing. He'd read Agnes Nutter's prophecies very carefully, and none of them had mentioned anything about other universes. Wouldn't that be something they'd need to know? Or was this so secretive that not even Agnes had known?

Rose and the Doctor shared a look when Crowley mentioned God. They must be atheists, then. Aziraphale had no problem with atheists. They had a rather logical viewpoint, considering that humans had no real reason to believe that God existed in most cases. Also, as Heaven and Hell cared little for humans, it made sense that humans would care little in return. In many ways, he found people who were strongly religious odder than atheists.  
"There are countless universes," Rose answered. "I've been to some of them, but there are more than anyone could visit in a lifetime."

Like atheists did with God, Aziraphale would have vehemently argued yesterday that alternate universes were a work of science fiction, existing solely in shows like Star Trek. However, the apparent existence of two beings from another universe tore an irreparable hole in that logic. He had no choice but to acknowledge that they were real.

"There's one thing I don't understand, though," Aziraphale questioned. "I guess there's no point in hiding this now, but I'm an angel. And considering that Crowley and I have been around for a very long time, shouldn't we have heard about this previously?"

Rose and the Doctor looked at each other again. They looked rather concerned this time. This time, the Doctor spoke up.

"What do you mean by an angel?" he asked cautiously.

Aziraphale was flustered by the question. Did they not have angels in their universe? He'd figured they were relatively, well, universal.

"You know," he started, gesturing with his hands in a circular formation around his head. "Angels. Happy, celestial beings with harps and halos. Not that we have any of that, mind you, but that's what the stereotypes always say." He pointed at Crowley. "And he's a demon, so he'd have big red horns, a tail, that sort of thing."

The Doctor looked relieved, as if he'd been expecting a different sort of angel. Rose just looked confused. She sounded hesitant. "People have angels in our world too, yeah. Demons too. They aren't real though."

Aziraphale smiled. Atheists, just like he thought. For a second, he'd been worried that there really weren't angels in their universe.

"It certainly seems that way to you, but angels, demons, and God are all actually quite real," he preached. "And, despite how strange it sounds, the universe is actually just six thousand years old. Things like the dinosaurs were just a joke."

The Doctor started laughing. Actually laughing, right in the middle of his explanation! How terribly disrespectful.

Aziraphale stopped explaining, huffing indignantly. Crowley glared at the Doctor.

"I'm all for questioning things. That's kind of my thing, after all, considering that I'm a demon. But Aziraphale's telling the truth, so there's no need to laugh at him." Aziraphale sent a grateful smile to Crowley for sticking up for him. Really, the Doctor was being extremely rude.

Rose leaned over and muttered something to the Doctor about being respectful of other's beliefs even though they were false. They were both quite impolite.

Crowley stood up suddenly, and the room went dark as a fluttering noise echoed overhead. The Doctor and Rose glanced up, surprised. A pair of pitch-black wings blotted out the light from Aziraphale's lamps.

"Careful not to hit anything with your wings, dear," Aziraphale called out.

"Don't worry about it, angel," Crowley replied. With just as little warning, the wings were gone, and the room was light again.

Crowley sat back down, lounging against the back of the couch. He smirked at the two gobsmacked individuals staring up at the ceiling where the wings had been. The Doctor recovered quickly, jumping up and trying to look at Crowley's back. Crowley scooched further away from him on the couch.

"Oh no. After you licked me earlier, you're not getting anywhere near me." Licked him? How dare anyone lick his Crowley? Other than him, of course, but that was another matter entirely. He'd have to have a word with this Doctor. Not to mention that that seemed like it was crossing some sort of incestuous line. Aziraphale shuddered, and he vowed never to consider that train of thought again.

"So," Rose began. "You're really not a Time Lord, Crowley?" She looked saddened by this, although Aziraphale couldn't imagine why. He also had no idea what a Time Lord was.

"Nope, sorry," Crowley said. "Don't know what that is, but I'm definitely not one. Unless they're demons?" he asked. Considering that Rose had said demons didn't exist in her universe, Aziraphale rather doubted that that was the case.

Rose shook her head, confirming Aziraphale's suspicions, then looked at the Doctor and grabbed his hand, squeezing it reassuringly. They both looked sad, now, and Aziraphale felt bad for the pair.

"What's a Time Lord?" he asked cautiously. The Doctor smiled, but it was a sad smile – the smile of a man who's loved and lost and loved again many times over.

"The Time Lords were a great and powerful race. We, or maybe they – not sure how to refer to myself in this scenario considering the whole metacrisis thing – kept watch over time itself. We lived on a beautiful planet named Gallifrey, built living machines called TARDISes, and traveled through time." The reverence in his voice erased any doubt that he was fabricating the story. Aziraphale could sense that not only had he been a Time Lord, but he'd lost them in some heartbreaking tragedy. Respectful of the man's privacy, he chose not to ask more about it, and Crowley made the same decision.

"Gallifrey's a planet here," Crowley said, sounding confused. The Doctor jumped up, excited by this news.  
"Yes, I know! We found it in that book Rose bought," he said. "Actually, that's how I found you, Rose. The receipt in the book. I saw the name of the store and realized why you were here, so I came by to help you out." Rose smiled.

"Anyway, I had a question about that," the Doctor continued. "If Gallifrey exists here, and you're angels and demons and can travel wherever you like, why haven't you run into the Time Lords?" He looked vulnerable asking this, as if part of him already knew what the answer was going to be. Aziraphale worried that the truth would break him. Rose saw Aziraphale's hesitance and grabbed the Doctor's hand again, squeezing it lightly.

Aziraphale made eye contact with Crowley. They both had the same thought. They had to tell Rose and the Doctor the truth, but neither of them wanted to do it. Crowley's eyes pleaded with Aziraphale to help, and Aziraphale eventually gave in.

"I'm very sorry, but we weren't kidding when we said our universe was six thousand years old," Aziraphale explained gently. "There aren't Time Lords here. There aren't even aliens anywhere. God created life on Earth, but there hasn't been enough time for life to evolve anywhere else yet. Gallifrey does exist, but it's a gaseous planet with no life forms on it. Nothing could survive. Crowley left me that note when he went on vacation to let me know where he was going. He's been there, and he can confirm that it's a dead planet."

Crowley nodded grimly, looking away from the Doctor and Rose.

Aziraphale watched as the Doctor's heart broke. Rose looked upset too, leaning against his side comfortingly. Despite what she had told him earlier, Aziraphale could clearly see that she loved her friend, and the Doctor loved her in return. He couldn't help but glance wistfully at Crowley, who was watching the two with a similar expression of yearning. Aziraphale looked away quickly, figuring he was just projecting what he wanted to see. Maybe angels could hallucinate after all, he decided.

"We thought we might finally have found a way back to our universe," Rose said, sounding pained. "We've been trying for months to return, but nothing's worked. And then we saw that Gallifrey existed and thought the Time Lords could help us."

She looked at the Doctor, who was staring off into the distance with a dark expression on his face. She squeezed his hand again, and he stood up without warning, pulling her up after him.

"It's late. We better get back to the house so you can get to bed," he said, sounding much older and more distant than he had a few moments earlier.

"Really, it's no bother," Aziraphale said, rising to his feet. "We don't sleep. Well, Crowley does, but he's not your typical celestial being. Regardless, there's no need to leave just yet. We may not be Time Lords, but we could try to help out. We're a bit more powerful than humans, after all."

Rose turned towards him, looking conflicted. She whispered something to the Doctor, and he shrugged.

"Maybe tomorrow," she said apologetically. "I think we just want some time to think right now, and it really is getting late."

Aziraphale nodded. "Of course, dear. Well, if you wanted to breakfast together, I think a reservation for four has just opened up at the Ritz for tomorrow morning. It would give me an excuse to keep my shop closed and not risk selling any books," he said, smiling. Rose smiled back tenuously.

"I think we can do that. Doctor?" she asked, looking up at the Doctor. He looked at her, and the grief on his face seemed to fade slightly. He nodded.

"See you tomorrow morning, then," Rose said. "Have a good night." It must have taken a lot of strength for her to say that, Aziraphale thought, as her bottom lip was trembling, and she seemed to be on the verge of tears. She was a brave young woman.

He and Crowley bid the two goodnight, then watched them solemnly walk off into the darkness.

"I feel sorry for them," Aziraphale said dolefully. "We chose to leave Heaven and Hell. They didn't choose this."

Crowley nodded. "It's not fair. But can we actually help them, angel? I don't know anything about parallel universes. Didn't even know they existed until a few minutes ago."

Aziraphale agreed that their chances were slim, but they needed to try.

"I'm not sure. but it feels like the right thing to do," he replied. "I think we can help them somehow."

Crowley thought about it, then nodded. Aziraphale wondered if he should bring up Crowley's behavior earlier after he kissed his cheek but decided against it. They'd have to talk about it eventually, but, like with the Doctor and Rose, it could wait until morning.

"Well, goodnight, angel," Crowley said, smiling at him as he headed for the door. "See you for breakfast tomorrow."

"Have a good night, dear," Aziraphale replied. Once Crowley was gone, he rummaged through the shelves of his shop, looking for anything and everything he could find about parallel universes.


	5. Chapter 5

The house was dark when Rose and the Doctor arrived, and it reflected their state of mind. They didn't say anything to each other as they walked upstairs, careful not to be too loud. Rose heard Tony sneezing in his room, and her heart clenched in sympathy for her poor brother.

The Doctor paused slightly when they passed his bedroom, but he didn't stop walking. They reached her room and she opened the door, slightly hesitant. He hadn't been in her room in ages, and he'd spent even less time in hers than she did in his. But she needed to be with him right now, and he seemed to feel the same way. She stepped inside.

They took turns getting ready for bed in the bathroom, then sat on the bed together. Rose could no longer keep herself together, and a tear slid down her cheek.

"We're never going to get back, are we?" she asked him, wiping at her eyes. "None of it was real. The Doctor in this universe isn't the Doctor. He's just a bloody demon."

The Doctor wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his chest and down onto the bed, and they laid like that for a while. He didn't say anything, and just kept stroking her head softly. It reminded her of how they used to cuddle, particularly when they were watching tragedies. She couldn't care less what Doctor he was right now.

He held her while she cried, rubbing patterns into her scalp at first then moving his hand down to her back. The slow motions soothed her, and her cries eventually turned to small whimpers.

"We'll get through it, Rose," he said after she'd calmed down a bit. "It's you and me. We always make it through."

"But what if we can't get back? We've both been trying so hard to." She paused for a moment, wondering if she should reveal her secret, then decided she might as well.

"I've been testing the Dimension Cannon with Jake and Torchwood," she whispered, sniffling. "Didn't want to tell you, but it never worked anyway. That's why my jacket got burnt."

"Oh," the Doctor said, sounding a little surprised. "Well, I was wondering about that. Never got around to asking you, though. I always liked that jacket."

She closed her eyes, snuggling further into his chest. She knew she should feel bad about this. Her Doctor was out there, alone, and he loved her and missed her terribly. That thought had kept her up many a night. But he wasn't here, and he wasn't going through what they were going through right now. This Doctor was, and that was all that mattered for now. She'd deal with the inevitable guilt and self-hatred later.

He hugged her more tightly to his chest, and she could feel her eyes starting to slip closed.

"What if we're stuck here?" she asked softly.

"Well, stuck with you, that's not so bad," he whispered back. She chuckled sleepily. As her mind drifted away, she felt a pair of lips kiss her head, and she smiled.

Aziraphale closed his book more forcefully than he had been intending to and sighed. He'd scoured the store for texts that mentioned parallel universes, and he'd found everything from a first edition of _Flatland_ to a signed complete set of _The Dark Tower _series. While the books all discussed the idea of alternate universes, they were works of fiction with different interpretations of how those universes interacted.

Some claimed that meeting your alternate universe self would tear apart the fabric of reality, but he knew that wasn't true. The Doctor and Crowley had already met – for Heaven's sake, they'd licked each other! – and the universe was as normal as ever. Well, as normal as it could be soon after an apocalypse, at any rate. The flowers were still blooming, the nightingales were still singing, and Crowley was still as infernally lovable as ever. So, everything seemed alright with him. This meant that the books were, for all intents and purposes, entirely useless.

He was usually endlessly fascinated by the pursuit of knowledge, and he could spend all night completely engrossed in whatever he was reading. This was in part a result of the fact that he didn't have to worry about many of the nuisances that plagued humans – sleep, illness, and suchlike – so he didn't have as many distractions as they did.

This had not been the case last night, however. He'd found himself reading and rereading passages of the books he was researching, as his mind kept wandering off to other places. In the midst of the exhilarating romantic climax of one work, he'd started daydreaming about what the work would be like if it had instead starred him and Crowley. It was ridiculous, quite frankly, and he was starting to wonder if the apocalypse had done something to his head.

When he hadn't been idly imagining his idyllic future with Crowley, he'd been plagued by doubts about his chances with the demon. He'd replayed the cheek kiss in his mind repeatedly and hadn't yet managed to come to a conclusion about what Crowley's reaction could mean. Most likely, Crowley was rejecting his advances, but another part of him wanted to believe that he'd misinterpreted the situation.

He glanced up at the window, trying to determine how much more time he'd have to do research, and was shocked to see that it was light outside. He took out his pocket watch frantically, and the watch hands rudely told him what he'd already deduced. It was 6:30 in the morning, and it seemed about time to meet Rose and the Doctor at the Ritz.

Wait, Aziraphale realized. He'd never actually told them what time he wanted to meet for breakfast. He wasn't used to dining with humans, particularly not ones from parallel universes. When he and Crowley ate together, they'd call each other beforehand when one of them was feeling peckish, or Crowley would just show up at the shop and lurk nearby while idly discussing the merits of various restaurants until Aziraphale would get the (not-so-subtle) hint that he wanted to go get food.

Humans were different. They wouldn't have any way to know that he'd made a reservation for the four of them at the Ritz at 7 that morning. For all he knew, they might not eat breakfast until 9:30.

"Oh," he muttered to himself despairingly, "I better call Crowley."

He did just that, and Crowley picked up on the second ring.

"'Ello?" he asked blearily, his voice muddled by sleep. Aziraphale smiled fondly at the gruff sound. He never understood why Crowley liked sleep so much. While the two of them shared an admiration for many human experiences, sleep was one of the ones Aziraphale resolutely avoided. He'd tried it once and woken up with a terrible ache in his back, probably in part due to the fact that he'd been sleeping crunched up in a ball in the corner of a jail cell during an undercover operation in the Greco-Persian Wars. Since then, it had just seemed like a waste of time, distracting him from the many other pleasures of life. Like listening to Crowley's rough, sleepy voice, for instance.

Crowley, unaware of Aziraphale's inner musings, cleared his throat.

"Ziraphale?" he asked. "What is it? Is this about those humans?" Aziraphale blushed, realizing he'd forgotten to respond.

"Yes, sorry. Quite. I didn't tell them when our reservation was, and I'm worried they'll be late. Since we actually made a reservation this time, I don't want to miss it." Usually, they didn't bother with reservations. A table was always miraculously available whenever they arrived at a restaurant. If Aziraphale was responsible, it was often because a group at one of the tables received such wonderful news that they couldn't wait until the end of their meal to go celebrate. If it was Crowley's turn, the most unpleasant group in the restaurant all came down with a nasty bout of stomach flu and rushed out just as they arrived.

In this case, Aziraphale had decided to forgo their usual procedure and actually make a reservation, as he figured it would be easier to coordinate with the other two if they met at an exact time. And he was certainly right about that, if only he'd had the forethought to tell them what that exact time was going to be.

"You didn't tell _me_ when our reservation was," Crowley replied. He did have a point, Aziraphale thought. The Doctor and Rose had looked so sad when they realized that they might not be able to get back to their universe that Aziraphale hadn't given much thought to making their plans for the next day. He'd just blurted out something that sounded acceptable, as he'd wanted to make sure that he'd see them again. The two seemed like the type to run off and never return.

"You can call me whenever, so it's different," Aziraphale countered. "They don't even know my number." He heard Crowley grunt, acknowledging his point.

"The reservation was for 7, by the way," Aziraphale added. Crowley was silent for a moment.

"Wait… 7? It's 6:40, angel. If we don't hurry up and get there ourselves, it won't matter if they're on time or not." Aziraphale heard rustling noises as Crowley presumably changed (which took less time than it would have for a human, as Crowley merely had to think his new clothing into existence) and got ready.

"Be there in a minute," Crowley said quickly, then hung up.

Aziraphale looked over the piles of books he'd gathered, trying to decide which ones made the most sense to bring. He eventually decided on four of them, figuring they had all been equally unhelpful, and shoved them into a tartan shoulder bag. Turning off the lights in the shop, he walked out and waited.

Crowley screeched to a halt in front of him a few minutes later. For once, Aziraphale thanked the Heavens that Crowley was such a ridiculously fast driver, and he jumped into the car.

"Find anything?" the demon asked, eyeing the books sticking out of Aziraphale's bag curiously. Aziraphale's discontented expression conveyed that he'd found nothing of value. Crowley winced.

To brighten up the mood, Aziraphale turned on the CD player, but he frowned when a Queen song started playing. He didn't recognize it and didn't like it, which wasn't much of a shock to either of them. The fact that he knew very little about bebop was a point of pride for him. Any music released after the gavotte went out of style was too modern for his tastes, which resulted in his musical palette being rather limited (although he admittedly had a soft spot for opera singers and some musical theatre).

The song was blaring out so loudly that it hurt Aziraphale's ears and shook the windows of the car. He frantically poked at the CD player until it turned itself back off, then stared out the window, ears still ringing. Central London whipped by, and they arrived at the Ritz two minutes later.

They hopped out, and Crowley shot a nasty glare at a nearby traffic warden who was already eyeing the Bentley. Aziraphale scanned the area, but there were no Crowley lookalikes waiting in front of the Ritz. Crowley peeked inside, but there was no one resembling him indoors either.

After a few minutes of people watching, Aziraphale came to the conclusion that Rose and the Doctor hadn't planned to come at 7. Crowley, who seemed to agree, was tapping his foot and staring off into the crowds of tourists wandering about.

Aziraphale checked his watch impatiently. It was 7:05. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the city rolled out of bed reluctantly and prepared itself for the day. People swarmed around, getting coffee, chatting on their phones, and grumpily glaring at the tourists blocking the sidewalks. Aziraphale walked over to Crowley.

"They will come, don't you think?" he asked slightly nervously. He checked his watch again, but not much had changed. The watch said it was 7:10, then it ticked. Now it was 7:11.

"They will, angel. Don't worry so much," Crowley reassured him. Aziraphale couldn't help it. Caring about people and worrying over them was sort of his thing. He tried to relax, contenting himself with the fact that they could always free up a table when the Doctor and Rose arrived, and waited.

They speculated about the lives of the odder individuals they spotted – a woman walking three cats on a leash, a person in a Stormtrooper outfit, and an extremely tall man – as the minutes ticked by. Aziraphale checked his watch again. 7:30. He opened his mouth to tell Crowley that they should perhaps find some way to get in touch with their dining companions when he heard a familiar voice a few feet away.

"Sorry, are we late?" a woman asked, sounding out of breath. Aziraphale turned around, a smile already on his face. Rose ran up to them, the Doctor close behind.

"Not at all! It was my fault for not telling you when our reservation was," Aziraphale replied. "The reservation was for 7, but that shouldn't be an issue." The Doctor and Rose glanced at each other and nodded, then the Doctor grinned and dashed into the Ritz. Rose didn't seem concerned, so Aziraphale didn't give it much thought. Crowley's alter ego was strange and unpredictable, but Rose seemed used to it.

He glanced at Crowley, who nodded and concentrated for a moment. Inside, Aziraphale knew that a particularly nasty group who had been mistreating the waitstaff suddenly found themselves feeling extremely uncomfortable. Sure enough, three stout-faced individuals threw open the doors of the Ritz and sprinted out of the building, yelling for a cab. Although Aziraphale generally loved everyone, he had little respect for people who were rude to customer service workers, so he didn't feel much sympathy for the three.

"Looks like a table just opened up," said Crowley, smirking. Rose hesitated. Aziraphale knew that the concept of miracles was probably quite overwhelming for her, as it would be for any human, so he understood her reaction.

"They're just a little ill," he explained comfortingly. "Nothing to worry about. And Crowley always picks the rudest people in the restaurant. Although he might not act like it, he's quite nice sometimes." Crowley scowled, but he didn't argue with that statement.

"S'not that," Rose said. She pointed at the Doctor, who had just exited the restaurant. He walked towards them, holding up a piece of blank paper and smiling at Rose.

"He just made us a reservation too," she explained. "That's psychic paper, so it can say whatever on it. Probably says we're some important dignitary or somethin'."

"Ah," Aziraphale replied. Well, it seemed like the other two had some miracles up their sleeve as well. He looked at Crowley, who shrugged languidly.

"They didn't deserve to eat here anyways. Now come on. I'm starving," he said, already heading inside. Aziraphale's stomach grumbled in agreement, and they all followed him.

Rose was looking forward to a nice meal. She'd had an awkward morning, and she hoped that Aziraphale and Crowley had discovered something useful.

She'd woken up still tightly wrapped in the Doctor's arms, and she snuggled further into his chest before realizing what she was doing. She was supposed to keep her distance from this Doctor, not sleep with him (even in the platonic sense of the word, although the other interpretation crossed her mind as well). For a few minutes, she didn't move. This Doctor was warm, safe, and had shared months of experiences with her that the Time Lord Doctor hadn't. But there was still a chance that she'd be reunited with the other Doctor, and he'd hate to see her curled up with this one.

She'd extracted herself from the human Doctor's arms, waking him up in the process. He'd looked at her awkwardly, as if he wanted to say something but was too nervous to, then left to go get ready in his own room. They hadn't talked about it since. Rose had a number of things she wanted to tell him – that she'd enjoyed spending the night with him, that she'd sort of like to do it again sometime, and that she'd slept better than she had in ages – but couldn't push herself to when she knew there was a chance that she'd learn how to get back to her universe in just a few hours' time. The Doctor seemed to want to discuss it as well but hadn't brought it up.

She hoped this breakfast would help clear everything up. Aziraphale and Crowley chatted amicably with them about the weather while they looked over the menus. She decided on a traditional English breakfast, while the Doctor ordered American-style pancakes. Aziraphale and Crowley both asked for extraordinarily expensive caviar breakfasts, so she assumed that celestial beings could create money whenever they wanted to. After handing her menu to the waitress, she asked if Aziraphale had learned anything about traveling between universes. The books he was carrying suggested that he'd been researching the topic.

"Well," he started uncomfortably. He picked up one of the books nervously. "Not exactly. I found quite a few books that discussed alternate universes, but they all said different things. And none of them had any practical advice about how to travel between universes."

That's what she had expected, but she was still disappointed. She'd hoped that an actual angel with access to Heaven (she was still freaked out by the idea that Heaven and Hell really existed in this universe) could find some information that she and the Doctor hadn't.

"We do still have powers though," Crowley interjected, interrupting her thoughts. "I was thinking that we might be able to use them to probe the walls between universes. Maybe we could break through that way."

Aziraphale nodded, as he'd had the same idea. He put the book down and held Crowley's hand.

"Let's give it a shot," he said, smiling at Crowley. Rose thought that he looked rather happy to be holding hands with the demon. The Doctor smirked at her, and Rose guessed that he was thinking exactly the same thing. The angel and demon were definitely in love.

The celestial beings closed their eyes tightly, concentrating as they exercised an ability beyond Rose's comprehension. The world shifted slightly, as if it was a video and its camera operator had just adjusted some settings. She felt a strange wave of something pass through her, but she couldn't see anything.

She watched Aziraphale and Crowley hopefully as they reopened their eyes.

"Well, there are certainly other universes out there," Aziraphale said, frowning. "I could feel them."

"I could too," Crowley said. "Actually, I could see them. There was another me sitting here. He had brown hair, though."

"Ha!" the Doctor shouted. "You're not always ginger, either." He grinned. Rose would never understand his obsession with being ginger. Brown was a much better color on him, in her opinion.

"Did you see anything else?" she asked. Crowley shrugged, slightly uncomfortably.

"Not much. It all looked the same, other than that. Except you and him weren't there. It was just me and Aziraphale." Aziraphale blushed and fidgeted with his napkin.

"Well, there was the fact that you and I were… Well, you know," Aziraphale said, trailing off. Rose thought she saw Crowley blush slightly too. She chuckled, as she thought she had a good idea of how that sentence was going to end, but she let them have their privacy.

"Did you see any way to travel between the universes?" the Doctor asked. Aziraphale frowned.

"I don't believe we can," he said thoughtfully. "We could view that one, and we saw that there were more out there, but the wall between them was far too strong to break through."

"Also, we couldn't see all the universes," Crowley added. "I saw others, but they all had us in them. Like you said, there isn't a Heaven or Hell in your universe, meaning there's no angels and demons. I don't think our powers can reach that far."

"So we'll never be able to see him again," Rose said dully. She felt like she should be more upset, as this confirmed that everything she'd been working for was all for naught, but part of her felt… relieved? As if some part of her had grown used to this Doctor and this universe, and this was finally a confirmation that she could accept this Doctor as her own. Thinking about it was making her anxious.

"I don't think you will," Aziraphale said solemnly. "I'm so sorry." She smiled weakly at him.

She looked at the Doctor. He seemed sad, too, and she reached out her hand to his. He grabbed it, holding it tightly between both of his own. Wherever the other Doctor was, this one was real and here with her. That's what mattered for now.

"Here are your pancakes," someone said. The waitress placed her meal in front of her. She'd almost forgotten that they were here to eat breakfast. Her stomach reminded her that that was the main purpose of this outing, and she waited a few moments for everyone's food to arrive before digging in.

A conversation about their meals quickly supplanted the more somber discussion they'd been having earlier. Rose and the Doctor thought that the food was absolutely delicious, and Aziraphale and Crowley explained that they'd been coming to the Ritz for many years and that everything on the menu was incredible. Aziraphale even let her try a bit of his caviar. It wasn't as good as she expected something that costed £700 to taste, but it wasn't bad either.

"Did you know that humans eventually find a whole planet full of roe? In the other universe, at least," the Doctor said. He took her spoon and tried some of the caviar, swishing it around in his mouth.

"Eh, not bad," he said. "But the caviar from the vinegar seas of Raxacoricofallapatorius is far better. And far cheaper, now that I think about it."

"Raxacori… Raxacocofall… What was that?" Aziraphale asked, his eyes wide.

"Raxacoricofallapatorius!" the Doctor said cheerfully, waving the spoon around animatedly. "It's a planet. Home of the Raxacoricofallapatorians and member of the Raxas Alliance."

The conversation turned to the subject of the Doctor's many adventures. He told them all about the Ood, Daleks, Slitheen, and more. Rose interjected when they discussed aliens she'd had some experience with (which wasn't many – even she didn't know most of the aliens the Doctor mentioned).

She was making good friends, having a good conversation, and the Doctor was still holding her hand. This universe finally felt like home.

Aziraphale was amazed by the Doctor's stories. He hadn't ever imagined that that many planets could exist. His universe seemed so small in comparison. He and Crowley had been working to save Earth from the apocalypse for the last 11 years, but the Doctor had protected all manner of planets from aliens and disasters in only a sixth of their lifetime. He couldn't wrap his head around it.

Crowley was as fascinated as he was. While Aziraphale was a rather domestic angel, preferring the homely experience of running a bookshop, Crowley had always lived a faster life. He had travelled to the stars and seen many of the universe's planets. He recognized some of the planets that the Doctor mentioned and interjected with his own descriptions of them. Many of them were physically similar but were devoid of life in this universe.

After a while, Aziraphale checked the time. They'd been chatting for over an hour! He interrupted a lively conversation about some aquatic planet both Crowley and the Doctor had visited to inform them of the time.

"Sorry to interrupt, but I just realized that we might be overstaying our welcome," he said. The waitress eyeing them irritably from across the room confirmed his suspicions. He reached for the bill and used a minor miracle to conjure up enough to pay for it.

"Well, that was a great meal," the Doctor said happily, and Aziraphale agreed. He loved how full and comfortable he felt after eating. It was one of the many reasons why he was glad he'd foiled the apocalypse. Gross matter or not, food was delicious and worth sullying his celestial temple with.

"Oh! Before I forget…" Aziraphale grabbed the customer copy of the receipt and carefully wrote out two phone numbers. He handed it to Rose.

"Is this your number?" she asked him.

"Mine and Crowley's. Mine is on top. This way, we can communicate more easily. Crowley even has a smart phone, so he can store your number on his phone too and call you whenever he wants!" Rose smirked, and Aziraphale figured he'd said something that made him sound dated. Crowley was always much better with new technology than he was, so that wasn't a surprise.

"I got Snapchat too," Crowley said. "Plus Facebook and Twitter. Just add me wherever." He handed his phone to Rose, and she did something using that information on her phone. Aziraphale didn't understand it at all, but he was glad they'd be able to make plans now.

After Rose and Crowley had finished adding each other, they headed outside. The Bentley was covered in parking tickets, and Crowley scowled at the traffic warden who was adding another one to the windshield. A sudden gust of wind blew them all away, and the officer turned to chase after his notepad and pen as they blew down the sidewalk.

"Did you do that?" Rose asked incredulously.

"Yep," said Crowley, smirking. "We're gonna go before he gets back, but let me know if you want to hang out again sometime."

"I have a lot more stories to tell," the Doctor said. "That was only about .03 percent of them." Rose laughed, and she grabbed his hand.

"Let's go. See you around, yeah?" she said, waving as they turned and walked into the distance.

Aziraphale smiled and waved goodbye to them. That had been nice. He rarely formed strong friendships with humans, as they couldn't understand what it was like being an angel and living for so long. The Doctor and Rose were different, though, and he had a feeling that they would become great friends.

He spotted the traffic warden heading back towards them, pen and paper in hand. He and Crowley hastily got in the Bentley.

"Hold on tight, angel," Crowley warned, then slammed his foot on the gas. The Bentley sped into the road and down the street, while the traffic warden just stared after them in surprise.

As they drove back to the bookshop, Crowley decided that he was done running away from Aziraphale. After seeing that parallel universe, he couldn't hold himself back anymore. He needed to know why Aziraphale had kissed him. He also wanted to apologize for his reaction, as it had been uncalled for.

So, when they arrived back at the shop, he followed Aziraphale inside, trailing behind him and peering at some of the books. Although he'd told Aziraphale he didn't read books, that wasn't true. He read quite a bit, actually. Aziraphale knew that – he'd caught him occasionally flipping through the books in the shop appraisingly, making little "ah" and "eh" sounds as he read – but pretended that he didn't.

"They were quite nice, weren't they?" Aziraphale asked casually, as he puttered about near the entrance, trying to decide whether or not to open the shop yet.

"Yeah," Crowley replied. "Very."

He wasn't paying attention to the words his lips were forming right now, as his mind was decidedly elsewhere. He wanted to ask Aziraphale what the kiss had meant, wanted to explain why he'd run away, wanted a lot of things actually. But he was terrified of what would happen – the same fear that had seized him and driven him from the bookshop – so he was frozen.

Aziraphale turned and spotted him, apparently choosing not to open up the shop. His brows drew together in concern, and he stepped towards him carefully.

"Crowley? Are you okay?" he asked hesitantly.

"Fine," Crowley said automatically, gulping.

Thoughts of the parallel universe raced through his head. The hair thing was different, yeah, but also the fact that they had both ordered pancakes. And, perhaps slightly more significantly, that their hands were clasped together on top of the table. And that Aziraphale had fed him a piece of fruit from the top of his pancake. And that he'd kissed him afterwards gleefully.

Aziraphale had seen it, and he hadn't looked disgusted afterwards. That, combined with the spontaneous cheek kiss earlier, gave him just enough hope to ask…

"Why did you kiss me?" he blurted out suddenly. Aziraphale looked taken aback for a moment. He fidgeted with the cover of one of the books next to him, not making eye contact.

"I, uh, well, you know. Crepes! That's it. I'd gone to get crepes last week, as you well know, and crepes just make me feel very, well, French. And so, I was thinking about how they're a big fan of goodbye kisses like that, and…"

"Aziraphale," Crowley growled. He knew when his angel was lying. "For Heaven's… Satan's… for someone's sake, just tell me the truth."

And then suddenly a pair of lips were touching his gently. Although it had been six-thousand years, Crowley had never forgotten the feeling. Aziraphale pulled back, watching him with a terrified look.

"That's why," he whispered. Crowley grinned, feeling a sense of joy he hadn't felt in God… Satan… Aziraphale (he was going to start using Aziraphale now, as he was far better than any of the others) knows how long, and leaned back in.

They kissed softly for a while, before Aziraphale parted his lips and invited Crowley to explore further.

Needless to say, the bookshop didn't open for quite some time.


	6. Chapter 6

Rose was in an excellent mood, which was unexpected considering the news she'd received earlier. There was no doubt now that she was stuck here in this universe with this Doctor. And yet, instead of feeling upset about that, she was entirely focused on locating the brown object the Doctor had just said he spied with his little eye.

"Could it be… that shop?" she asked lightly, pointing at a brown tailor's shop in the distance. Her other hand was clasped in his, and she swung it back and forth happily as they walked back to their home.

"Nope," he said, popping the 'p' at the end. "Try again."

She groaned, looking around. There were so many brown things in central London, so this hadn't been the best choice of game. She spotted a brown handbag, brown dog, brown sign, brown hair…

"I give up," she said, laughing. "What was it?"

"Your eyes!" he exclaimed gleefully. She glared at him.

"Doctor! You know that's not how this works. I can't see my own eyes," she grumbled, pretending to be annoyed. She tried to look stern but couldn't help but smile.

"Seems to work fine to me considering that I just won," he said smugly. She smacked him playfully but couldn't stay mad (even pretend-mad) at him for long. He was ridiculous, but she loved him anyway.

And she did love him, didn't she? She couldn't keep pretending that she didn't. Not to herself, at least. She'd been denying it for months because she couldn't let herself get close to this Doctor without feeling like she was abandoning the Time Lord one, but now she knew she'd never see the other Doctor again.

Part of her was upset, but a far larger part was realizing that she'd been denying her attraction – both romantic and sexual – to the human Doctor for a while. And while she missed the Time Lord and couldn't see herself moving on from him anytime soon, she felt like she could fully embrace her feelings for this Doctor now.

So she acknowledged to herself that yes, she did love him, and squeezed his hand contently as they walked back to their home.

"There you are! We were wondering where you'd gone," Pete exclaimed as Rose opened the door.

"We were just out getting breakfast with some friends," she explained. "What's going on?"

Pete, Jackie, and Tony were standing in the foyer, all wearing swimsuits. She looked at the Doctor to see if he knew what was happening, but he just shrugged.

"We're going to the beach!" Tony yelled, grabbing her hand and jumping up and down. "I got flippahs!" He rushed over to Jackie and grabbed a pair of flippers out of her bag to show them.

"Oi, give those back now or you won't have them for long!" Jackie shouted, snatching them out of his hands. Tony started sulking.

"Sorry for the late notice, but we thought it would be a nice way to relax for a day. Get our minds off of everything, you know?" Pete said. "You don't have to come, of course, if you're both busy, but it's just a day trip."

Rose thought a day at the beach sounded perfect, so she had no complaints. Her life here had revolved around finding a way back to the other universe, and she had no idea what to do with it given that that was no longer a possibility. Plus, she hadn't been to the beach in ages. She'd been longing to get out her swimsuit again.

"That sounds great to me. What about you, Doctor?" she asked her companion. He grinned, seemingly just as eager.

"I love the beach!" he said excitedly. "I doubt it'll compare to the sunsets on the beaches on Sidornia, but Earth beaches are pretty nice too." To be fair, Sidornia had had some pretty amazing beaches.

"Grab your stuff, then!" Pete told them, shooing them inside. "We were planning to leave half an hour ago."

The zeppelin ride was peaceful, and the beach they arrived on was nearly as lovely as the one they'd visited on Sidornia. The sea breeze wafted through the air, while waves splashed gently against the sand. Far in the distance, children were playing on another section of the beach, while parents sat lounging under umbrellas with books and drinks. Rose felt her stress drift out to sea as she settled on a towel.

"How come no one else is here?" she asked Pete.

"Private beach," he explained, gesturing to the expanse of land. "This is all ours for the day. I rented it out for us."

Rose doubted she'd ever get used to this lifestyle, but she definitely enjoyed it. The Doctor sat down next to her, yelping as his bum touched the hot sand.

"Ah!" he screamed, jumping up and glaring at the spot where he'd attempted to sit. Rose burst out laughing.

"That's why you use a towel!" she said in between giggles, pointing to her own towel.

"The beaches I normally go to don't have hot sand," the Doctor muttered sulkily. Without warning, he plopped himself down in her lap.

"Oi! Get your own towel!" she yelled, shoving him off. He slid off her lap onto the side of her towel, then scooched over so he was taking up half of it.

"Didn't bring one, so let's share," he said playfully. She rolled her eyes fondly and acquiesced, shifting him over a bit so she still had enough room. Of course a relaxing beach trip would be anything but relaxing with him along for the ride (he'd spent most of the Sidornia trip stopping a plague of giant spider-like creatures from taking over the planet). Even Tony was being calmer than him, focusing intently on building a sandcastle while Jackie and Pete tried to set up some beach chairs.

"Alright, you can stay here. With one condition," Rose warned the Doctor. He nodded, watching her very seriously. "No talking. I just got this nice beach read, and I want to finish it by the end of the day. Got it?"

"Aw, but Rose, I love talking! This version of me – well, the only version of me considering that I can't regenerate – has got such a great gob. Talking is very—" She put her finger on his lips, shutting him up.

"Later," she emphasized. "Right now, it's very nice outside and I'm very warm, and I'm really looking forward to reading this book. I never got a chance to read it when it came out."

He sighed overdramatically and slumped against her shoulder, reading the book with her.

The main character, a high schooler in a rainy U.S. town, had just seen the handsome Cullen family for the first time when the Doctor interrupted.

"This one is so boring," he whined. "And terribly written. For some reason, this series gets popular again in the 3100s. They remake the movies five times! And when I say movies, I mean they make literal simulations where you can go in and play through the story yourself. They reused the original actors for that. Don't know why. Kristen Stewart wasn't very good in the role."

She continued reading, trying not to pay him too much attention.

"Why couldn't they make a Harry Potter simulation, anyway?" he continued, not noticing how she was pointedly ignoring him. "Those books were so much better. I took that test once, you know, where you figure out what house you're in."

She'd never understand how he could go from being an intimidating Time Lord to a literal child. She flipped to the next page, humming thoughtfully to herself at a particularly interesting point in the story. One of the Cullen siblings was very attractive, but apparently didn't date anyone.

"Do you know what house I got?" the Doctor asked, unrelenting. Rose gave in, realizing she probably wasn't going to read any more of this book today.

"What house?" she asked, sounding the slightest bit exasperated.

"Slytherin!" he exclaimed, grinning now that she was finally paying attention to him. "Can you believe it? Always thought I was more of a Gryffindor myself. Although I always thought Barty Crouch Jr had a strong resemblance to this me, and he was a Slytherin, so I guess that makes sense."

"Right now, I can definitely see that," Rose said. The Doctor finally realized that he'd done a very bad job of sitting quietly while she read her book.

"Oh, sorry. Well, you're not reading anymore. Want to go swim? I'm always a much bigger fan of swimming than reading when I go to the beach. You can read anywhere, but you can't swim anywhere. Not easily, at least."

"Your gob is really something today," Rose said, chuckling.

"My gob is really something every day," he countered. She couldn't argue with that.

She placed the book on the towel and stood up, stretching. She caught the Doctor checking her out and smirked. He blushed, turning towards the sea. He wasn't bad looking himself, she thought. He was always slim and a little bit foxy, but he was particularly attractive without a shirt on. They didn't get to relax like this often when they were travelling in the TARDIS, so she rarely had a chance to appreciate the view.

She started to walk over to him, but her walk turned into a run when her burning feet reminded her how hot the sand was. She sprinted past him, jumping into the shallow waves near the shore. The water was slightly cool but not unpleasantly so, and she called him in to join her.

He came in after her, and they swum further away from the others. They relaxed for a while, enjoying being in each other's company without all the barriers they'd put up over the last few months. The Doctor's brilliant smile and lightheartedness warmed her more than the sun ever could. She'd forgotten how much she loved spending time with him, and she regretted that she'd hurt him so much.

"Do you see that shell?" he asked, interrupting her musings. He was pointing down towards her feet. She looked down at the ocean floor, but she couldn't see anything other than the reflection of the sun on the water.

"Nope. Maybe you still have special Time Lord vision," she suggested.

"Special Time Lord everything, probably," he agreed. Smug bastard. "I'll go get it for you." He sank down under the water, and she waited.

Something wet and bony wrapped around her ankle, pulling her down. She yelped, kicking at it, and hit the Doctor's arm. He splashed to the surface, grabbing her shoulder with one hand as he steadied himself, then he examined his other arm.

"Got to admit, I deserved that," he acquiesced. He did, so she had no regrets about her actions.

"You okay?" she asked, checking over his arm. It looked alright, but she had a feeling it would probably bruise soon. There were a few toenail-shaped marks from where her toes had hit him, and she winced. That probably hurt. She glanced up at his face and her cheeks flushed as she suddenly realized just how close they were standing. His warm hand on her shoulder felt electrifying.

"Think so," he said, slightly roughly. He must have also noticed their proximity, but he hadn't moved away yet.

She'd told herself she wasn't going to make any advances towards this Doctor, as incredibly attractive as he was, because that would mean cheating on the other Doctor. But now, knowing that she was cut off from him forever, the choice seemed so simple.

She closed her eyes, leaning in. A gentle hand on her jaw stopped her.

"Rose," the Doctor whispered. "Do you really want this? I'm not your Doctor." She opened her eyes, watching him. He was nervous, but he looked hopeful.

A week ago, she never would have imagined giving into these urges. She hadn't even wanted to acknowledge that she was attracted to him, but so much had changed since then. Looking at him, she realized that she really did have feelings for him. She cared for both Doctors, of course, but she had feelings for him that were separate from her feelings for the Time Lord. This Doctor had shared experiences with her – and would share experiences with her in the future – that the other never could. They went on daycations together, watched nature documentaries together, cared for sick kids together, and lived a very domestic life together. Even though it had driven them both a little stir-crazy, part of her truly enjoyed it.

And that was nothing compared to the experiences they could share. Images raced through her head – them laughing together as they got a mortgage, the joy on their faces as their first child reached its hand out towards them, the Doctor clothed in a fancy tuxedo as a figure proclaimed them husband and wife. They could have a life together – a real, human, wonderful life together – and that was all them. She smiled at him, knowing exactly what she was going to say next.

"You are my Doctor," she whispered back, then brought her face closer to his, sealing their lips together. He didn't respond for a moment, then began kissing back desperately. For a few moments, they lost themselves in each other. Rose's hands moved over the Doctor's back, grabbing any skin she could reach. The Doctor's hands reciprocated. One inched under the front of her bra, rubbing along the skin there.

"What are you doing?" Tony asked, splashing towards them. "I want to play!"

They jumped apart frantically. She'd completely forgotten that they weren't the only ones there. Her parents watched the scene from higher up on the shore, laughing so hard that they seemed to be having trouble catching their breath.

"You wouldn't like that game much," the Doctor said, jumping in to save the day. "Let's play a more fun game. Did you know that I once made an 89-kilometer sandcastle? I bet you can't make one that high. It had elevators and everything!"

"No way!" Tony said, completely forgetting about the scene he'd just witnessed. "I can make one that's one hundred million longer!" The Doctor raised his eyebrows in mock disbelief. He turned towards Rose, raising an eyebrow as he reached out his hand.

"Want to help us?" he asked, wiggling his fingers. "We're making a sandcastle that's one hundred million long." She grinned and grabbed his hand, then they ran towards the beach and started building some very tall sandcastles.

They didn't end up talking about the kiss until later that night when they'd returned home. After taking a long shower and rinsing off all the salt and sand from earlier, Rose collapsed on her bed gratefully. The Doctor, also freshly showered, sat next to her reading a book.

"Guessing that's not _Twilight_?" she asked sarcastically. He smirked, showing her the cover. It had a picture of some of the strange fish they'd seen on the show they'd watched together.

"Nope," he replied. "It's about deep-sea creatures. I was curious about the Googly-eyed Daleks. Apparently, most of the deep-sea life here evolved differently than the creatures in our universe."

She rolled over towards him, resting her head on his shoulder. Part of her wanted to talk to him about what had happened earlier, as she knew they needed to have a conversation about everything, but another part of her just wanted to continue blabbing about fish, books, and other lighthearted topics. It was easier, and serious conversations were always uncomfortable.

"Are you really okay with being with me?" the Doctor asked suddenly, putting the book on the nightstand. Well, apparently they were going to talk about it now.

"Yeah, I am," she reassured him.

"You said earlier that I was your Doctor, but I'm obviously not him," he said, sounding frustrated. "He has two hearts and a TARDIS. I'm just human and boring and TARDIS-less. Most of the time you've been with me, you've just ignored me. But now that you know we're stuck here together, suddenly I am your Doctor and you're okay with it?" He wasn't making eye contact with her, and Rose reached up, turning his face towards hers. His face was open and vulnerable, and she realized that they needed to talk or else she'd just hurt him again.

"I've been ignoring you this whole time because I did have feelings for you," she admitted. "I just didn't think I should, since I thought we could still get back. And you're not him, no, but I've realized that I don't want you to be him."

She looked away, thinking about how to phrase what she wanted to say. She'd only just realized some of this herself.

"I care about him still, and I miss him. And knowing that he's out there somewhere alone is hard, yeah. But in the months that we've been here together, we've had experiences together that he never had. We've made new friends. We've even gotten domestic. And I never thought I'd like that, but with you it's not so bad, you know?" He chuckled, nodding.

"It was hard to separate my feelings for him from my feelings for you, since I always thought of you as the same person, but you're different," she continued. "You're more human, which isn't boring at all, and we're going to grow old together, and that'll be amazing. And that's all you. We'll have something special together I'd never have had with him. And he knew that, and he wanted that for us. There's no point feeling guilty about it when that's what he wanted. And it's weird to think about, but he'll find someone else. He'll be alone for a while, but then he'll meet someone fantastic and travel with them and get a new face and not be lonely anymore. And all the while, we'll be here, living our wonderful, ordinary human lives. And that's our journey for us to go through together. So, all that's to say, you _are_ my Doctor. And I meant what I said when we first got here. I love you."

For once, the Doctor was speechless. He just gazed at her tenderly, then leaned down and kissed her. This kiss was softer and more delicate than their desperate kiss earlier. He pulled away after a few minutes, running his thumb down her cheek.

"I love you too," he whispered, then kissed her again.

This time, there was no Tony to interrupt them.

The next morning, neither of them got out of bed right away. They both still faced the problem of not knowing what to do. Rose had spent all her time at Torchwood, and the Doctor's life had revolved around trying to find the Time Lords.

The Doctor carded his fingers through Rose's hair, and she smiled at him. Their first night together had been brilliant, and he was still in disbelief that it had really happened. He wasn't wearing any clothing, however, and Rose wasn't either, so that pretty much proved that it had. Unless an alien had come by and stolen all of their clothing, but he doubted that since aliens apparently didn't exist. (Which was really boring, and he didn't think he'd ever get used to _that_.)

After an encore of the previous night's activities, confirming once and for all that they had definitely slept together last night, they both got up and got ready for the day. Once they were fully dressed and ready to go, Rose sat back down on the bed.

"What are we actually gonna do?" she asked, echoing his thoughts. He sat down next to her, bouncing on the bed a bit.

"No idea," he replied, shrugging. "We could be travelers. Go all over the world, write blogs about the sights we see, buy lots of little souvenirs at little shops."

"You and your little shops," Rose said, laughing. "You should try coming with me to a big shop sometime. Like a shopping mall." Her eyes flashed with a devious glint, and the Doctor felt a little apprehensive. "I could take you clothes shopping," she sang in a singsong voice.

"Ugh," the Doctor said, shuddering. "I have all the clothes I need. I never understood why people pick out different outfits every day. It's such a waste of time. I do miss the wardrobe on the TARDIS, though. Now _she _was a beauty."

"I miss the TARDIS in general," Rose said. "Traveling was way more exciting when we could go anywhere in time and space."

At the mention of the TARDIS, a neuron fired in the Doctor's brain (which was quite large, as it retained the Time Lord quality of being bigger on the inside), sparking a chain of thoughts. Of course! How had he not realized it before? He'd been so distracted by his lovely Rose that he'd never made the connection.

"Rose!" he yelled, jumping off the bed and grabbing her hands. "Rose!"

"Yeah?" she asked, slightly confused but smiling.

"I've got it! Oh, Rose, I've got it! The angel and the demon! They're the key!" Everything made sense now, and it would work. It just had to work! And then they'd both have the life they deserved to have together, and it was going to be incredible, and – and he still hadn't explained any of this to Rose. He took a deep breath, calming himself down and getting his thoughts in order.

"The TARDIS. You know we have that little piece of TARDIS that's still growing and won't finish growing for decades?" It had grown an inch or so since they'd arrived, but it was still a tiny little piece of coral.

"Yeah, of course," she replied. "But it won't be ready for ages. We'll be old by then."

"No, we won't! See, I wasn't just trying to find the Time Lords so we could get back to our universe. I also needed their help growing the TARDIS more quickly. But the Time Lords don't exist here, so I thought we couldn't do it."

"But," Rose interrupted, beginning to understand where he was going with this, "angels and demons exist!" His face split into a huge grin, and he pulled her up off the bed and into a quick kiss.

"Exactly!" he said excitedly. "And we've seen them do miracles already, so I bet they could grow the TARDIS for us easily."

She pulled out her phone, opening up Snapchat. They took a selfie, and she sent it to Crowley, captioning it, "feel like getting breakfast?"

A few seconds later, her phone chirped, and she opened up his snap. Her eyes widened, so the Doctor peeked over her shoulder to see what it said.

Crowley lounged in a bed, shirtless (luckily, the snap didn't show anything lower than his chest, so the Doctor was blissfully unaware of whether or not the rest of his body was identical to his own), against Aziraphale, also shirtless. He smirked lazily, like a satisfied cat who had just caught a juicy piece of prey. His response read, "sure thing. i'm about to be occupied for a bit but we can do the ritz 8:30."

"Well, I guess they figured things out," Rose said, laughing. Her phone chimed again with a second snap. She opened it up curiously.

"SO SORRY. DON'T MIND CROWLEY. THAT WAS VERY INAPPROPRIATE. WE'LL BE THERE AT 8," the text screamed at them. Aziraphale, now fully clothed, had his face very close to the camera and was frowning at it. One of his fingers partially blocked the shot. Crowley was visible in the background, very much not clothed and rolling his eyes.

Rose took another selfie with the Doctor, both of them trying their best not to laugh. "8 is good," it read.

"Let's not be late again," she suggested, and the Doctor agreed. They grabbed everything they needed and headed out, with plenty of time to spare.

"I can't believe you took one of those self-pictures with me while we were in bed!" Aziraphale said exasperatedly. "And you even added a suggestive comment to it!"

He wasn't actually very upset, considering that Crowley had convinced him to undress again afterwards and come back to bed, resulting in some very nice morning sex. In addition to the very nice evening, midnight, 3 am, and sunrise sex they'd had. Since neither of them had to sleep, their appetites were rather insatiable.

They arrived at the Ritz a few minutes early, and the Doctor and Rose were already waiting outside. The two were holding hands, and Aziraphale gave Rose a questioning look. She smiled, and he grinned back at her. He'd known that everything would work out with the two of them.

He took care of clearing up a table for them. A family that had been planning to dine at the Ritz instead found that they'd won a four-day trip to a tropical paradise, and they excitedly ran back to their flat to prepare for the trip.

"A table just happened to open up," the waitress said, perplexed, as they walked in and requested a table.

"Where was it this time?" Crowley asked him as they got seated.

"Bora Bora," Aziraphale replied happily. He loved doing miracles for people. It gave him such a warm feeling. And this family had just lost a pet recently, so they needed a nice distraction.

After a few minutes of idle chitchat, the Doctor took out a little brown piece of coral, setting it on the table.

"What's that?" Crowley asked, picking it up. "Whoa!" he yelped, dropping it. "What _is _that thing?"

Aziraphale, curious, tried picking it up and nearly dropped it as well. Power rushed through his fingers, flowing through his soul. He could see the past, the future, and the far-reaching corners of the universe in the present. He'd never experienced anything like it before.

"It's a chunk of TARDIS," the Doctor explained. "The ship I had in the other universe that travels through time and space. It literally stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

"Your ship was that small?" Crowley asked, startled.

"No, it's way bigger than that! It's bigger on the inside, actually," Rose said. That didn't seem possible to Aziraphale, but he was also an angel who could do miracles, so he wasn't one to judge.

"It's growing," explained the Doctor. "That's one of the reasons we wanted to meet, actually. Right now, we've sped up the growth, but it's still going to take fifty years to finish growing. By then, Rose and I will be ancient."

"Hmm," Aziraphale said, gingerly touching the TARDIS piece again. "And you're thinking we can speed that up?"

"Can you?" Rose asked hopefully. "We just figured that, since you were an angel and demon, it might be something you could do. We've seen that you have powers."

Aziraphale felt the strands of the TARDIS fuse and merge as it grew at an infinitesimal pace, and he could see what steps he'd need to take to increase its rate of growth. It would take a lot of power, though…

"I can do it, with Crowley's help," he said. The Doctor and Rose grinned at each other excitedly. He turned to Crowley. "Will you help?" he asked, uncertain. Crowley had had a strong reaction to the coral, so perhaps he wouldn't be comfortable with it.

"Of course I will," Crowley reassured him. "Anything for you, angel."

"Oh, Crowley," Aziraphale said sweetly, feeling his heart melt from the pure love radiating through him. He grasped Crowley's hand, smiling at him. He loved the serpent more than he loved all of God's creatures, and he had a boundless love for God's creatures. Remembering they had an audience, he cleared his throat and looked back at Rose and the Doctor.

"Ahem. Anyway, we'd be happy to help after breakfast," he stated.

Breakfast arrived shortly thereafter, and the conversation turned to more lighthearted topics.

After they'd all enjoyed a good meal, Crowley invited them over to his flat so they could start growing the TARDIS. As he explained, it had far more space than Aziraphale's bookshop, and Aziraphale was apparently supposed to help him with his plants anyway.

Rose had never seen anyone care for plants the way those two did. Aziraphale got down on his knees and caressed (she couldn't think of another way to describe it) each plant's leaves, whispering gentle words of encouragement to them. The Doctor noticed that the plants were trembling when Crowley walked by, and he asked him why.

"Oh, you know. They just get like that sometimes," Crowley said, embarrassed. He was clearly lying. Aziraphale, who'd been engaged in what looked like a very personal conversation with a Chinese evergreen, looked up.

"My dear, they don't just get like that," he commented politely. "It's clearly because you scream at them and threaten them."

"You do _what_?" the Doctor yelled at him. Crowley raised an eyebrow, looking surprised.

"They're just plants," he muttered, glaring at one.

"_Just plants?_ They're not _just_ anything," he said darkly, his furious Time Lord side coming out. "Do you know that those plants evolve into a great, sentient species in the future? A member of that species sacrificed her life to save me and Rose. And clearly, if they're scared of you, they're already becoming sentient. So, think about that next time before you threaten them."

Crowley stared at one of the plants, clearly shocked and a little scared. Rose felt bad for him, as she never treated plants particularly kindly either, but she could see where the Doctor was coming from.

"But they're just plants right now," he mumbled. "I wasn't trying to cause any actual harm."

Aziraphale stood up, pulling him into his chest. "It's alright, dear. Just be nicer to them from now on." He stroked Crowley's back comfortingly, and Crowley leaned against him. Aziraphale patted him on the back. "Let's go ahead and work on growing this time machine, then we can apologize to the plants later." Crowley nodded numbly, shooting a look at one of the plants as he went over to meet Rose and the Doctor. The plant wiggled its leaves at him.

"So," Aziraphale said, clapping his hands together. "Where should we do this?"

Rose located a vacant spot in Crowley's flat (of which there were many, as the flat was the epitome of minimalism) and pointed to it.

"That should work," she said. She glanced at the Doctor to check, and he nodded. He pulled out the TARDIS core from his pocket, placing it in the center of the spot.

"Alright, here we go," Aziraphale said gleefully. He sat down in front of it, and Crowley sat across from him. He grabbed Crowley's hands, then they both looked intently at the piece of TARDIS. It looked to Rose as if they were concentrating all of their power on it.

The TARDIS grew slowly on the outside, although Rose guessed that its inside was growing much more rapidly. Aziraphale and Crowley stepped to the side as it got larger, reaching their waist, then their shoulders, then finally growing taller than both of them. Rose expected it to look different than the TARDIS she was used to, and it flickered a few times between different shapes, but it ended up as the traditional blue police box.

And then, just like that, it was done. A fully-grown TARDIS sat in Crowley's living room. Rose couldn't believe it.

"Well, that wasn't too hard after all," Aziraphale said. Rose ran over and hugged both of them excitedly.

"Thank you so much!" she said. "You did it! We got the TARDIS back!"

The Doctor ran up to them too, beaming. He grabbed Rose's hand.

"What do you say we check it out?" he asked her, bouncing on his heels. He beckoned to Aziraphale and Crowley. "You can come too!"

She nodded, far too excited for words, and they ran towards it, throwing the doors open. Aziraphale and Crowley followed them inside cautiously.

"It's decorated funny," Rose said, slowing down and looking at the interior. The Doctor didn't seem to care about the new decor, heading straight to the console instead and carefully inspecting everything. "What's with all this tartan?"

"Tartan is stylish!" Aziraphale said defensively. Rose begged to differ, but she figured she'd have to get used to it, as there was tartan everywhere – on the console, the walls, even the jump seat. Where there wasn't tartan, there was a dark grey minimalist design that clashed terribly with the rest of the room.

"I'm guessing the dark parts are yours?" Rose asked Crowley. He looked at them, then nodded.

"Yep. That's kind of my color," he said. "Much better than tartan," he added, smirking. Aziraphale glared at him, but there was no malice behind it.

"I couldn't care less what she looks like," the Doctor said from behind them. Rose jumped.

"Does everything look okay?" she asked.

"Everything's absolutely perfect. Rose, I have my ship back!" he said, hugging her again. He pulled away quickly, running back to the console. She'd missed this side of him. She was ready for a more domestic life, full of mortgages and kids and all the other responsibilities that came with adulthood, but now they could have this too. Like the other him had said, the Doctor and Rose were finally in the TARDIS, and everything was just as it should be.

"So," the Doctor started, flipping something on the console. "Where do you want to go?"

"What do you mean?" asked Aziraphale, walking over to check out the console. "Where can we go?"

"Anywhere!" the Doctor said. "Forward, back, left, right, up, down. Anywhere you want. Well, maybe not back. Like you said, the universe is only six thousand years old, and I'm not sure how well I'll fly this new TARDIS. So anywhere other than that."

"How about the future?" Crowley suggested. "Don't know where. Just the future. It'll be nice to know that we have one."

"Now that I know I can do," the Doctor said, laughing. "Rose, want to help?"

There had never been anything that she wanted more. She showed Aziraphale and Crowley how to operate some of the mechanisms on the console, then joined the Doctor at her usual spot. Aziraphale shared a nervous look with Crowley, then clasped his hand tightly.

"Are you ready for this?" he asked. Crowley gulped, not looking very ready.

"As ready as I'll ever be," he replied. They shared a chaste kiss, then they each grabbed their part of the console.

The Doctor glanced at Rose, grinning in a way that indicated he was about to make a horrific pun.

"Rose, Crowley, Aziraphale… It's time to go back to the future! Allons-y!"

He threw a lever, sending the TARDIS hurtling off into the unknown and carrying them all towards a bright new future.


	7. Epilogue

*Three months later*

_I've started writing this journal to document some of the wonderful events that have happened in my life lately. I've never been a fan of the fast life, and this should hopefully give me the chance to slow down and reflect on the last few months._

_I've seen all manner of wondrous things. I only travel with the others on weekends, of course, as I have a shop to tend to and books to read. But even in the short period of time we've been traveling, it's quite incredible how many adventures we've been on! Apparently, even though aliens don't exist right now, they eventually evolve on planets all over the universe._

_Just last weekend, we visited a planet in the future where talking dog-like creatures walk around like humans. Supposedly, the canines of today will turn into them, but I find this hard to believe. I scrutinized a golden retriever quite closely earlier while on a walk with Crowley, but dogs have a long way to go before they'll resemble the creatures we spoke to._

_Speaking (or writing, I suppose) of Crowley, I also find it difficult to believe we've been together for three months now. Those months have flown by, and having a relationship with him feels like second nature. We see each other almost daily, except when he's off traveling with our friends, and go on dinner dates with increasing regularity._

_Unlike me, Crowley loves the fast life, and he travels far more frequently with the Doctor and Rose than I do. They experience terrifying situations, usually far more dangerous than the ones I choose to go on, and he loves telling me about them over dinner._

_Of course, he only travels with them some of the time, as he greatly values spending time with me. I often find him lingering around the shop, casually reading a novel or looking through the books on a shelf. He's stopped pretending that he doesn't like reading, finally. I never understood why he lied about that in the first place. He still doesn't speak that openly about it, but I'll sometimes recommend books to him that I've enjoyed, and I've noticed a few books related to some of my interests hidden surreptitiously near spots in the store that I regularly frequent._

_Our dinner dates have been outstanding. We have countless new places to dine at now, and we haven't even scratched the surface of the mountain of culinary wonders that await us. The Doctor and Rose have found many incredible restaurants to drop us off at, and my stomach has been more than satisfied with their discoveries._

_The Doctor and Rose are quite happy as well, from what I've seen. They've bought a nice little cottage outside London that they stay in when they aren't adventuring, and they spend about half their time there. Although I can't say I entirely understand why, they both found it hilarious that they have a mortgage._

_I know they still have some issues they're working through, as do we all, but they're doing well. The Doctor has been open with us about his struggles with anxiety and depression due to the difficulty of adjusting to his new human nature, but he's seeing a therapist now, which has helped immensely. When he's having a bad day and doesn't feel like traveling, Crowley and I always make sure to stop by the cottage and spend some time with him._

_I sometimes spot Rose staring sadly out the window of my shop or her cottage. When I've asked her why, she's said that she wonders what the other Doctor is up to now and if he still thinks about her. I've reassured her that of course he does, if this Doctor's love for her is anything like his, and he'd be happy to see how well they're doing. She always smiles and says that I'm right, and she's seemed to worry about it less and less frequently._

_Life isn't perfect for Crowley and me either. I worry constantly about Heaven and Hell coming to get their revenge on the two of us. I was at least incorrect about there being a future war between humans and celestial beings, considering that Earth is still a thriving planet many millennia from now, but that doesn't guarantee that the two of us will still be around._

_Luckily, we have a time machine now, and the Doctor and Rose have promised to help us escape in case of an emergency. Crowley even bought a smartphone for me so I can call them if I'm not in my shop. I'm still a little unsure how to use it, but I'm learning. I've even mastered the use of emojis!_

_While we all still have some problems we're working through, life is mostly quite good. We've started a new photo album with pictures of our adventures, and we've already filled up most of it. I'm sure we'll have many more wonderful times ahead in the future. I'll update this journal soon with more tales of our excursions._

_Sincerely,_

_Aziraphale_


End file.
